Gene and Toots: A Story of Love...and Recovery, is a poignant and uplifting account of one couple's nearly thirty-year love affair. Two divorced adults with five teenagers between them, Marilea and Gene weren't looking for love. They were content to lay back and enjoy their freedom. But then love found them. At mid-life. When men and women often start dreaming about second chances.

Energized by hope, attracted by desire, Gene and Toots is a memoir about the power of love, how two people with plenty of baggage came together and took that second chance they'd not dared hope for. No one was more surprised than Marilea to be so smitten with Gene from the very start.

Gene and Toots is the third and last in a series of memoirs, all of them about recovery from substance use disorder. The first two books are unflinchingly honest and raw, leaving little to the imagination. Gene and Toots is a fitting conclusion to Marilea's recovery story, painting a detailed picture of the power of love in seeking one's own redemption and transformation.