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Thursday, May 6, 2021
GO! magazine — A&E in Northeast Oregon
La Grande’s Mariel Gates
publishes fi rst novel
■ ‘Briarwood Girls’ focuses on the topics of addiction and recovery
By Lisa Britton
Go! Magazine
M
ariel Gates hopes her fi rst
novel brings awareness to
the world of alcoholism and addic-
tion.
“The story I wrote sheds some
light on why people struggle with
addiction,” she said. “Showing they
are human and they might have
taken some wrong turns.
“Briarwood Girls” was released
April 29. It is available through
at www.pegasuspublishers.com,
Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.
G
ates graduated from La
Grande High School in 1999
as valedictorian of her class. She is
an honor graduate of Stanford Uni-
versity in political science (2003)
and graduated from the University
of Oregon law school in 2007.
She also competed as a high-lev-
el triathlete and distance runner.
She struggled after law school.
“Life kind of handed me some
curveballs — and I didn’t do my
best at hitting them back,” she
said. “I got to see the dark side. It
changed the trajectory of my life.”
Mariel Gates
“Briarwood Girls” is categorized
as both young adult and adult.
The story focuses on the world of
alcoholism and addiction. The main
character, Aubrey, is an alcoholic
who enters rehab for the fi rst time.
Soon readers discover stories of
other women in the facility.
The book description ends with:
“The stories within Briarwood Girls
illuminate that no one chooses to
become an addict, and ultimately
only addicts can save themselves.”
“I wanted to shed light on the
stigma of addiction,” Gates said.
“It’s not a biography, but it hits
close to home.”
It was not an easy story to write.
“It was incredibly hard to write,”
she said. “There were times I got
physically sick.”
The main character, she said,
“came out in waves in the middle of
the night.”
She fi nished the book fairly fast,
but then the editing process took
about a year.
She said it was hard to share this
personal work of writing, and her
fi rst reader was a long-time friend.
“The hardest part was to share
it, to someone else read it,” she said.
She hopes the book relates these
thoughts about addiction:
“How do we help our friends or
family? How do we empathize?”
Again, she returns to her own
struggles.
“Those events changed my per-
spective on how we can give other
people more grace, and give myself
more grace,” she said.
Gates lives in Idaho with her
husband and three children.
This is her fi rst book, and she
has more in the works.
“Briarwood Girls” is available a www.pegasuspublishers.com,
Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.
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