Overview

How does a loving, committed marriage survive the effects of dementia? In her deeply personal and daringly original memoir, Anne-Marie Erickson lays bare the onset and eventual passing of her husband from dementia. Her writing is multidimensional, poetic as it weaves together fragments of word origins, mythologies, and Biblical passages. Infused with the author's love and compassion, this compelling memoir pierces the mysteries of living and dying. Yes, it's much about her husband's tragic affliction, but it also moves beyond that to where we can gain invaluable lessons on how to love and endure in the face of a debilitating illness.

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9781666406955

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Reviews

""We have waited a long time for a writer to bring light and a literary sensibility to the experience of loving and living through dementia. In the Evening, We'll Dance: A Memoir in Essays on Love and Dementia is honest, important, gorgeously written, and a pleasure to read. Anne-Marie Erickson, ever curious about her husband's changing consciousness, learns with her journalist husband a new lexicon with which to share his shifting reality. To this, Erickson adds a framework of myth, fairytale, photography, and art to give us an entirely original view of life-long love. It widens the paradigm. It enlivens the spirit."" -- Patricia Weaver Francisco, author of Telling: A Memoir of Rape and Recovery ""Startlingly good, this memoir is powered by grief, memory, and married love distilled to its essence, which is wordlessness. Poetic, literary, yet always accessible, it is certain to find a wide audience and win many awards.""--Will Weaver, author of Power & Light and Sweet Land ""In the Evening, We'll Dance is a deeply enriching read. These lyrical essays flow seamlessly into a whole, providing a prism-like reflection on what it means to love, to truly and deeply love, through the journey of dementia. These stories are continually drawn to the light, often through hard-earned dark passages. There is a page-turning suspense here, as this mythic and even mystical journey unfolds, as Erickson weaves her own and her husband's insights with gleaned wisdom from fairy tales, literature, medical experts, philosophers, spiritual traditions, poetry and song. Readers will be invited to deepen their own currents of meaningful love, whether living with dementia or any other of life's mysteries.""--Patricia Hoolihan, author of Hands and Heart Together: Daily Meditations for Caregivers

""We have waited a long time for a writer to bring light and a literary sensibility to the experience of loving and living through dementia. In the Evening, We'll Dance: A Memoir in Essays on Love & Dementia is honest, important, gorgeously written, and a pleasure to read. Anne-Marie Erickson, ever curious about her husband's changing consciousness, learns with her journalist husband a new lexicon with which to share his shifting reality. To this, Erickson adds a framework of myth, fairytale, photography, and art to give us an entirely original view of life-long love. It widens the paradigm. It enlivens the spirit."" -- Patricia Weaver Francisco, author of Telling: A Memoir of Rape and Recovery ""Startlingly good, this memoir is powered by grief, memory, and married love distilled to its essence, which is wordlessness. Poetic, literary, yet always accessible, it is certain to find a wide audience and win many awards.""--Will Weaver, author of Power & Light and Sweet Land ""In the Evening, We'll Dance is a deeply enriching read. These lyrical essays flow seamlessly into a whole, providing a prism-like reflection on what it means to love, to truly and deeply love, through the journey of dementia. These stories are continually drawn to the light, often through hard-earned dark passages. There is a page-turning suspense here, as this mythic and even mystical journey unfolds, as Erickson weaves her own and her husband's insights with gleaned wisdom from fairy tales, literature, medical experts, philosophers, spiritual traditions, poetry and song. Readers will be invited to deepen their own currents of meaningful love, whether living with dementia or any other of life's mysteries.""--Patricia Hoolihan, author of Hands and Heart Together: Daily Meditations for Caregivers ""The elegiac memoir In the Evening, We'll Dance affirms ongoing selfhood and enduring love in the face of Alzheimer's.""--Foreword Reviews

Author Information

Anne-Marie Erickson has worked as a laundry maid, candle factory worker, billing clerk, editorial assistant, and secretary. She's been a freelance writer and college composition instructor for many years, with degrees in American Studies (BA) and English (MA). Erickson has been published in the University of Minnesota Press anthology, North Writers II. She lives in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.

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