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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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