There are Little Snippets of My History in My Stories
Do you read books written with a character who has a disease?
When April 15th comes around every year, I think about my mother-in-law who passed away in 2018. While it brings to mind Tax Day for most people, I try to figure out how old she’d have been on her birthday. This year she would have been 99! If Alzheimer’s hadn’t taken her, I have no doubt that she’d have made it to 99 and beyond. Foy was the definition of a feisty woman. She was strong, determined, and healthy. Until she wasn’t.
By the time my mother-in-law was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, we knew she had some kind of dementia. You want to deny the diagnosis. How can you accept what you know will happen to someone you love? Even years later, the “before and after” of those days make me sad. How could this person who spent her whole life watching every little bit of food that went into her body not be the healthiest octogenarian on the planet?
My second mom was the perfect example of a depression-era child. Born in 1926, it showed that she’d experienced all the turmoil and struggle of the Great Depression. She never wasted anything and everything had multiple purposes in her household. She recycled plastic bags, wrapping paper, aluminum foil, boxes, and tissue paper. You name it, she could find a use for it. In the later stages of the disease we had to move her to a facility and when we cleaned out her house, I couldn’t believe what we found.
In the current work-in-progress I’m writing, I have a grandmother character who has late-stage Alzheimer’s and I draw on my memory of my late mother-in-law for some of the scenes. Is my main character in the historical fiction timeline exactly like my mother-in-law? No. But my memory adds emotion and depth when I generalize the known characteristics of what takes place.
Alzheimer’s is a horrible disease. Watching her lose her memories, her ability to function, her desire for food, her ability to walk, we watched her lose everything that made her the person she was. One thing she didn’t lose, was her ability to recognize us, her core family. She’d look at my pictures for hours and ask questions: vacations, family members, places we visited, and herself. She gave us moments where she surprised us with her memory, and minutes when time stood still for us and we cried for the valedictorian, almost teacher, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother we knew and loved.
In my book, I wanted to include a character with Alzheimer’s because sometimes they’re locked away and forgotten. People avoid visiting them because they don’t want to see the person they’ve become. I couldn’t count the many people in my mother-in-law’s facility who never had a visitor. Sure, their relatives paid the bills, but they didn’t want to actually see what had happened to their loved one. It wasn’t the patient’s fault, and who’s to say that somewhere in their brains they didn’t still know us, still remember us and still love us. So I hope I honor Foy, my second mother, in the fiction novel I’m writing.
If you would like more information about Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, you can visit: (https://www.alz.org/)
And if you want a good fiction book which portrays the disease, I highly recommend, Still Alice, by Lisa Genova. This book and movie show a terrifying, but truthful picture of early on-set Alzhemier’s disease.
BOOK REVIEW:
Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate
Lisa Wingate wrote a deeply emotional novel based on true stories of children stolen and sold in Memphis during the later days of the Depression and until as late as the 1950's. A ruthless operator named Georgia Tann had the whole system in her pocket. She had children stolen off front porches, off the street, and even convinced poor women giving birth that their children had died and took their babies. With her network of Tennessee Children's Home Society locations, she schemed to sell poor children into rich homes and many of the authorities turned a blind eye. The poor parents and their children didn’t see the money since Georgia lined her pockets with the blood money paid them. And many of the children didn’t make it to adoption, due to the poor conditions and predators working in her adoption “homes.”
Rill Foss along her sisters and a brother were taken from their houseboat, while their parents were at the hospital as their mother gave birth to twins. After being placed in one of these homes, Rill tries her best to keep her family together and alive, but they’re soon torn apart and scattered to different homes or worse. This is their story, but really it’s an example of the real children stolen by Georgia Tann.
The dual timeline novel switches between 1939 and present day South Carolina where Avery Stafford’s being groomed to take her father's and family's long-standing place in politics. She seems to have it all: beauty, wealth, power and a gorgeous fiancee. Her grandmother’s struggling with Alzheimer’s and has been moved to an assisted living facility. On a visit to her grandmother’s house, Avery finds a waiting taxi and she embarks an a journey to uncover her family's past, the past no one knows.
The history’s riveting and the story lines flow back and forth through time. You’ll remember this one long after you turn the last page and the fact that it’s based on a true story is really unbelievable. Lisa Wingate also wrote a book with journalist Julie Christie, Before and After, which chronicles some of the true tales of victims of this adoption scam. Our book club had a long and spirited discussion about the choice each character made and the tragedy of the whole time period in history. This was one of the best books I read in 2017. A solid 5 Stars!
We are so proud that Feisty Deeds: Historical Fictions of Daring Women was chosen as The Coffee Pot Book Club’s Highlighted Read of the Week as well as Gold Medal Winner in The Coffee Pot Book Club Book of the Year Awards 2024 in the Historical Anthologies category!
These 23 Stories of everyday women making brave choices which change their lives will make you cry, laugh and turn the page. You can purchase a copy of the book on Amazon, BookBub, Kobo, and Barnes&Nobles.
Look forward to your Patty's Pages every month...I feel a top seller coming!!