Trials of a Legal Junkie
Available Summer 2026
Trials of a Legal Junkie follows Robert Marion — a former Marine captain whose bestselling memoir has turned him into a national sensation. But behind the designer shirts and the chase for a movie deal, Rob is unraveling. Haunted by the death of his best friend and the long shadow of a fundamentalist childhood, he watches his career dissolve, his relationship collapse, and his occasional drinking harden into a lethal dependence on crystal meth.
Redemption arrives in the unlikeliest place: a Georgia sober living home, where Rob has to finally drop the narrative of his fabulous life. Trading a high-powered law career for work as a public defender, he discovers that liberation isn't found in a movie deal — but in service, surrender, and the quiet discipline of a single breath.
“Rich Merritt has lived enough for ten novels — and somehow survived to write the funniest, fiercest, and most brutally honest one. Trials of a Legal Junkie is a wild ride through excess, collapse, and comeback, powered by a heart of gold that refuses to stay tarnished."
— Charles Casillo. Author of Elizabeth and Monty and Marilyn Monroe: The Private Life of a Public Artist