Love in the Land of Dementia: Finding Hope in the Caregiver’s Journey

While in recent years there have been more skilled professionals and care facilities for dementia patients, close to 15 million Americans are family caregivers. In a combined memoir and caregiver’s guide, Shouse, a journalist and contributor to numerous Chicken Soup volumes, shares the story of her mother Fran’s last seven years, from diagnosis and a move to assisted living to a stay in the geriatric psych ward, and on to nursing home placement and eventually hospice care. The author’s short, first-person narratives, complete with dialogue, will undoubtedly resonate with the huge population of adults charged with caring for a loved one with dementia. Shouse ably expresses a daughter’s pain and sense of hopelessness, while exploring the intertwined dynamics of love, guilt, and grief. Though she is indeed fortunate to have found—and been able to afford—an excellent Alzheimer’s unit of a nursing home, her experience is universal, and compassionately rendered here. Readers come to know Fran, thanks to her daughter’s unconditional love, respect, and candor. Though the appendix features concise advice for advocacy, a minimal resource listing, and a cursory caregiver’s guide, in terms of guidance, these sections barely touch upon what is readily available in books like the classic The Thirty-Six Hour Day or Lauren Kessler’s Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer’s. (Nov.)