Book of the Week (1/20/2025)

Healing a Village: A Practical Guide to Building Recovery Ready Communities by Mark Lefebvre (Peter E. Randall Publisher, 2025)

This book is about hope. Over 107,000 fellow Americans died in 2023 from drug overdoses and another 178,000 died from excessive alcohol use. Lethal illicit drugs such as fentanyl, methamphetamine, and xylazine are showing up on our streets and poisoning our fellow citizens, including those who may not even intend to use these toxic synthetic drugs.

Healing a Village details a plan to build recovery capacity within a community to remove barriers and improve access to service for individuals and families seeking help from addiction. The author provides real-life examples of successful community coalitions that have delivered positive outcomes for their communities—from prevention, to harm reduction, to treatment, to recovery support. Lefebvre, the author, shares from his own experiences, “When I exited our local hospital following a 4-day detox, there were no treatment and recovery resources within my community. I was forced to travel to the west coast for treatment. That is no longer the case in my community today.” A case study of the Greater Portsmouth (NH) Recovery Coalition provides a deep dive on each of the elements of a Recovery Ready Community. The author uses personal struggles and successes in building recovery coalitions to validate the book’s thesis of hope. --Publisher's blurb

About the author:

Mark Lefebvre is the founder and statewide director for the Maine Recovery Friendly Workplace (RFW) program, where his focus is on building statewide capacity to recruit, train and support Maine businesses as Recovery Friendly Workplaces. In his prior role as the Pinetree Director of Community Engagement, Mark was responsible for the development of Recovery Ready Communities in the Seacoast of NH and southern ME.

Before joining the Pinetree Institute, Mark served as program director for the NH Works for Recovery program at Southern NH Services. He oversaw outreach and delivery of employment and training services to individuals and families affected by the New Hampshire opioid crisis and helped launch New Hampshire’s Recovery Friendly Workplace program. Previously, he had served on NH Governor Sununu’s Commission as a member of both the Prevention and Recovery Task Forces.

Mark Lefebvre is a person in long-term recovery from addiction and is the author of the book A Place in Time: Youth, Community & Baseball, a consultant, a radio DJ, and a podcast producer. Mark and his wife Vivian are co-founders of Safe Harbor Recovery Center in Portsmouth, NH, and live on the Seacoast of New Hampshire with their yellow lab mix rescue dog, Layla.