Eighth Reason I Wrote, “Someone They Can Trust”
“Someone They Can Trust”, my new novel, is available on Amazon. To receive news about what I’m writing, please subscribe to the author email at the bottom of this post.
Alzheimer’s Disease is a public health problem of staggering proportions, and a personal tragedy for a good chunk of our population. (Around six million people have it in the United States.)
Even if we weren’t dealing with mass shootings, a loneliness epidemic and a childcare crisis – the prevalence of Alzheimer’s is a loud call to band together and live more communally. Dementia can wreck a family. It’s that hard to deal with.
There’s a character in my novel, “Someone They Can Trust” who has Alzheimer’s, and the story shows how a loving community can make life livable for the victims of the disease and for their caregivers.
One of three protagonists in the book, Maya, is the main caregiver for her beloved Grandmother, who is found to have Alzheimer’s early in the story.
Another protagonist, Janice, lost her mother to the disease several years before, and is determined not to leave Maya to deal with her crisis alone.
The bond between these two women proves to be healing for both of them.
The story not only describes the grandmother’s descent from a devout and useful life; it’s a story about life going on and being full of graceful, sweet moments even in the midst of the disease. Those are what we can learn to create for each other. This is only one thread in the story arcs of three people, but I think it’s an important one. One in nine people over 65 now have this disease, so none of us is too far removed from it.
That’s why I wrote this book.
Colleen, I think these blogs are really helpful in drawing attention to your book and spark interest and reasons to read it!
I don’t know that I’ve read any other book with a character suffering from dementia. But it’s such a prevalent disease in our time, we need such books! Thank you for including the sweet-but-terribly-forgetful grandmother in your novel. And kudos, Colleen, for showing accurately the slow but steady decline that characterizes Alzheimer’s, adding more and more responsibility upon the caregivers.
Thank you Nancy. Caregivers are in a marathon, and they so need people cheering them on,!
You wrote what you know, and sadly what so many others have experienced, and it shows.