Why is it so difficult to escape our demons? To rise above the burdens of our past? After returning home from the European Theater in World War II, a young man never speaks of the horrors he witnessed in Europe. He marries and has three children but turns to alcohol to cope with PTSD. When the pressure of a family becomes too great he abandons his young wife and three children in the oil fields of the Canadian north and disappears from their lives. Alone, with only a strong will to cope, the mother does her best, but it is never enough. Desperate to keep her family together she makes a choice that tears the family apart. For her three young children, a hard life became one of misery. They had no nurturing, caring environment; no role models or examples of how to handle stress and adverse situations. In a life with little promise it was inevitable it would leave its mark and that at least one would succumb to the ravages of alcoholism, like his father. The House an Alcoholic Built is the story of three children struggling through life and the consequences handed to them by the past. This tale is a reflection of a disease that haunts far too many around the world and, ultimately, it is a journey through despair to find that we do have a choice in how we deal with adversity when life has little promise of a happy ending.