An edgy, unflinchingly honest remembrance, and a touching, useful guide to navigating a loved one’s dementia.
Bawmann’s debut memoir traces the course of his late father’s descent into Alzheimer’s disease, and the effects on the rest of family.
It’s an increasingly familiar problem—more people are living longer in the modern era, and many of those who make it to what’s called “old-old age” (85 years or older) will display symptoms of cognitive dysfunction. However, Bawmann’s father, Ronnie, was only 60 when his aberrant behavior became impossible to ignore. He had a history of depression, and was a difficult husband and father, the author says, even before dementia damaged his inner censor. Because of the resulting personality changes, his wife of more than 40 years left him. In early 2005, Bawmann received a call from his father, railing about his wife’s absence: “If she doesn’t come home, I’m going to kill her. I’m going to shoot her, then me.” It was a situation that the author had to manage from 1,000 miles away; he lived in Denver with his wife, son, and daughter, while his dad lived in rural Illinois. For the next few years, Bawmann and his younger brother, who lived in Boston, made frequent trips to deal with increasing crises. For example, in 2011, their father’s fixation on and harassment of an ex-girlfriend repeatedly landed him in court. As a result, he faced jail or commitment to a facility that could handle his illness. Bawmann has culled this memoir from journal entries that he kept during his decade-long ordeal, and it’s as much about the relationships between the various members of his family as it is about keeping his father safe. There’s more humor than one might expect in such a terribly painful and personal story, and the moments of sarcasm in Bawmann’s articulate, jaunty prose keep the pages turning. However, he doesn’t ignore his anguish: “The pain of his reprised toddlerhood is too deep. It can’t be excised from our souls. It haunts us like a nightmare with no end in sight.” Numerous family photos add context, such as the fact that Ronnie owned two different beagles, inspiring the title.
An edgy, unflinchingly honest remembrance, and a touching, useful guide to navigating a loved one’s dementia.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4809-8741-8
Page Count: 278
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Co.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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