• Author: Alix Kates Shulman
• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (September 16, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0374278156

A fall from a loft bed left author Shulman's 75-year-old husband with traumatic brain injury and utterly dependent on his wife, as she recounts in this deeply affecting memoir of their ordeal together. The fall in the summer of 2004 in their Maine seaside cottage inflicted numerous broken bones, internal bleeding and blood clots to Scott York's brain, causing damage that Shulman gradually learned would take years to heal and probably cause permanent memory loss. Advocating for the best treatment, therapy and eventual care back in their New York City loft became the author's "calling" for the next year, though to her growing dismay she recognized that her once brilliant husband, a sculptor and former financier, would never make art again or even be able to hold an intellectual conversation. His impairment is rendered particularly poignant as Shulman (Drinking the Rain and Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen), moves backward in time over their 50-year relationship, first as college lovers in 1950, meeting up again in 1984, when as divorced adults in their 50s they rekindled their passion and mutual interests and got married. Carving out time for herself and her writing kept her from having a nervous breakdown, and while her hope at times flagged, Shulman's devotion never faltered, as demonstrated by her candid account.

(Source: Publishers Weekly)

A gripping portrayal of how the lives of a wife and her husband were forever changed when the husband incurred permanent brain damage. Feminist author Shulman (A Good Enough Daughter, 1999, etc.)-a fiercely independent woman whose marriage was based on autonomy and freedom and for whom privacy and time for her writing were paramount-was suddenly deprived of both when her husband Scott's traumatic brain injury left him dependent and demented, yet still loving and lovable. Within the details of the accident and the aftermath-a ten-foot fall in the middle of the night on a small island off the coast of Maine, his rescue, his subsequent time in hospitals and rehab and his return home-the author interweaves the story of their unusual romance. It began with a teenage crush in 1950, followed by a 34-year hiatus in which each married, had children and divorced (she twice). Their relationship resumed in 1984, and by the time of the accident they had been together for some 20 years. Her early misunderstanding of the doctors' prognosis-she thought he would return to normal in one year-was gradually replaced by the stark realization that while physical improvements in strength and mobility were possible, his mental capacities, including his short-term memory, were gone. How she dealt with this shattering knowledge and managed his care, as well as how their relationship changed, comprise the core of this compelling love story. Although she rejoiced in his small triumphs and basked in his warmth and charm, the author includes the frightening episodes when he disappeared or became so hostile and violent that she called the police. Totally engaging and surprisingly frank. For women concerned about facinga similar future, disturbing yet somehow reassuring.

(Source: Kirkus Reviews)

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