In this perceptive and tender memoir, poet Jeanne Murray Walker tracks a difficult pilgrimage familiar to many: caring for a loved one with dementia. She tells the story of her mother, whose memory began to fail in her 80s, and sets this narrative against her own multigenerational memories.
Walker is frank about the heartbreak and conflict caused by the painful, unpredictable stages of Alzheimer’s. She is also honest about the ups and downs of her spiritual journey—the doubts and questions she grappled with as a girl as well as the confusion and frustration of loving God in the face of suffering.
Her voice is forthright, lyrical, and full of hard-won hope as she offers up her experience as evidence that “Maybe faith gives a person the ability to see whatever joy and beauty and wit flickers in the disorienting darkness.” (Center Street)
