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| View Larger Image | Dancing with Rose: Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer's | Hardcoverby Lauren Kessler (Author)
| List Price: | $24.95 | |
| | Binding: | Hardcover | | Publisher: | Viking Adult | | Edition: | 1st Edition | | Page Count: | 272 Pages | | Publication Date: | May 31, 2007 | | Sales Rank: | 268,674th |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Previously published in HC as Dancing With Rose One journalist’s riveting—and surprisingly hopeful— in-the-trenches view of Alzheimer’s Nearly five million people in the United States are living with Alzheimer’s. Like many children of Alzheimer’s sufferers, Lauren Kessler, an accomplished journalist, was devastated by the disease that seemed to erase her mother’s identity even before claiming her life. But suppose people with Alzheimer’s are not slates wiped blank. Suppose they experience friendship and loss, romance and jealousy, joy and sorrow? To better understand this debilitating condition, Kessler enlists as a bottom-of-the-rung caregiver at an Alzheimer’s facility and learns lessons that challenge what we think we know about the disease. A compelling, clear-eyed, and emotionally resonant narrative, Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer’s offers a new optimistic look at what the disease can teach us and a much-needed tonic for those faced with providing care for someone they love. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 5.0 based on 48 reviews)
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Alzheimer's Insight  5 Stars
August 18, 2009
Lauren Kessler weaves a fabric of understanding of those needing Alzheimer's care and the caregivers (family/facility.) Her witing provides the reader with humor, compassion, insight, and appreciation. One of the best!
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A Hard Decision by John Thorndike (Athens, OH United States)  4 Stars
July 16, 2009
When Lauren Kessler visited her mother in a home for Alzheimer's patients, taking along her youngest child, a four-month-old baby, her mother's response shocks her. "What is that thing? Get that thing away from me."
Kessler and her mother had struggled for years, Kessler keeping her distance as her mother fell apart and eventually died. Yet some years later, Kessler is drawn into the world she didn't want any part of, "the land of Alzheimer's," and takes a job on the lowest rung of the ladder, doing the grunt work in a facility built expressly for dementia patients.
I thought many times, as my father succumbed to Alzheimer's, of what it would be like to put himin a nursing home. I didn't have to--but what if I'd been married with young children? What if I'd been working fifty hours a week, as I'd been doing just a few years before? He might well have wound up in a home, no matter how much he didn't want to go. Millions of people with Alzheimer's face this possibility, and Kessler's service, in writing this book, is to show us what life is like inside, to remind us of who is looking after our elderly, and to show that while life in such homes is far from perfect, decent people are making surprising connections with those who have been all but dismissed from the larger world.
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Can't stop thinking about the book. by Rosemary D. Miranda (Eugene, Or.) 5 Stars
June 17, 2009
Excellent book, made me think about my own parents and I especially liked the part where she talks about her son leaving for college. Exactly how I felt. Many times I felt like crying. My grandma had alzheimers so for me a very relevant book.
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An excellently-written, informative read by school marm (Oregon) 5 Stars
June 09, 2009
Dancing With Rose was loaned to me by a fellow school teacher. Her book club had just completed a reading and discussion of the book, and she thought that I, too, would find it interesting. As a lover of all things fiction, I was hesitant to accept her offer. But I am so glad I did. First of all, Kessler is an excellent writer. I read two or three books a week, and the quality of an author's writing (or lack thereof) has become almost as important to me as the topic and/or plot being explored. After all, there are too many books to read, and too little time to devote to the task to squander precious hours reading poorly-written material. Also, I wondered if I would even enjoy this book, since I have had no experience with people in the throes of Alzheimer's disease, be it through acquaintance or relation. None of that mattered. Kessler's tight portrayal of her experiences working in an Alzheimer's care facility, and her conclusions regarding the hope, dignity, and even the joy that exist even in the midst of dealing with the disease, are a source of deep inspiration. As a 56-year-old mother of five grown children, I will recommend Kessler's book to my brood. After all, my husband and I are not getting any younger, and should Alzheimer's disease be in our future, I want my own kids to be informed and unafraid. This book should be must-reading for anyone confronting - or who is helping someone confront - this disease. Kudos to Lauren Kessler for sharing her experiences with all of us. She has touched my heart, and I am grateful.
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a "must-read"book by J. Cordis-Phippen (Seneca, OR USA) 5 Stars
June 05, 2009
My mother died of complications from vascular dementia, related to Alzheimers in fall of 2007. I had a copy of "The 36 hour day" and read it from cover to cover so I sort of knew what to expect next in her disease or condition. But I wish Dancing with Rose had been available to me then as I found it to be the most helpful book I have ever read on the subject. After reading it, I loaned it to my sister to read and later gave a copy of it to the woman who cared for her the last 2 1/2 years of her life in an adult foster care home for memory impaired patients. We all would have benefited from reading it 2 or 3 years sooner. It should be required reading for all adults.
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