Everything Left to Remember: My Mother, Our Memories, and a Journey Through the Rocky Mountains

Jagger (Unbound) offers a beautiful reflection on love, memory, and inheritance in this heartrending account of a road trip she took through Big Sky Country, one “my mother will never remember and a journey I’ll never forget.” After her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2015, Jagger planned a camping trip for the two of them in Montana. Jagger’s prose enchants as she chronicles the stunning natural landscapes they encountered in the state’s mountains and plains, and the internal reckoning she wrestled with regarding her family’s legacy: “My grandmother had dementia. My mother has Alzheimer’s. I am a sapling inside of a forest that seems hell-bent on forgetting.” Also present is the frustration Jagger felt as she guided her mother through terrain unfamiliar to them both—“My mother was losing her mind and I was losing my patience.” While it’s a somber tale—made more immediate against the collapse of the natural world (“Will we still call it Glacier National Park when it no longer has any glaciers? Will I still call her my mother when she no longer knows she has daughters?”)—it’s one that readers will have a hard time forgetting. This will cast a spell on fans of Cheryl Strayed and Glennon Doyle. (Apr.)