No Saints around Here

A Caregiver’s Days

Nonfiction, Health & Well Being, Medical, Ailments & Diseases, Diseases, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Biography & Memoir
Cover of the book No Saints around Here by Susan Allen Toth, University of Minnesota Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Susan Allen Toth ISBN: 9781452941301
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press Publication: April 1, 2014
Imprint: Univ Of Minnesota Press Language: English
Author: Susan Allen Toth
ISBN: 9781452941301
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Publication: April 1, 2014
Imprint: Univ Of Minnesota Press
Language: English

When we promise “in sickness and in health,” it may be a mercy that we don’t know exactly what lies ahead. Forcing food on an increasingly recalcitrant spouse. Brushing his teeth. Watching someone you love more than ever slip away day by day. As her husband James’s Parkinson’s disease with eventual dementia began to progress, writer Susan Allen Toth decides she intensely wants to keep her husband at home—the home he designed and loved and lived in for a quarter century—until the end.

No saint, as she often reminds the reader, Toth found solace in documenting her days as a caregiver. The result, written in brief, episodic bursts during the final eighteen months of James’s life, has a rare and poignant immediacy. Wrenching, occasionally peevish, at times darkly funny, and always deeply felt, Toth’s intimate, unsparing account reflects the realities of seeing a loved one out of life: the critical support of some friends and the disappearance of others; the elasticity of time, infinitely slow and yet in such short supply; the sheer physicality of James’s decline and the author’s own loneliness; the practical challenges—the right food, the right wheelchair, the right hospital bed—all intricately interlocking parts of the act of loving and caring for someone who in so many ways is fading away.

“We all need someone to hear us,” Toth says of the millions who devote their days to the care of a loved one. Her memoir is at once an eloquent expression of that need and an opening for others. No Saints around Here is the beginning of a conversation in which so many of us may someday find our voices.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

When we promise “in sickness and in health,” it may be a mercy that we don’t know exactly what lies ahead. Forcing food on an increasingly recalcitrant spouse. Brushing his teeth. Watching someone you love more than ever slip away day by day. As her husband James’s Parkinson’s disease with eventual dementia began to progress, writer Susan Allen Toth decides she intensely wants to keep her husband at home—the home he designed and loved and lived in for a quarter century—until the end.

No saint, as she often reminds the reader, Toth found solace in documenting her days as a caregiver. The result, written in brief, episodic bursts during the final eighteen months of James’s life, has a rare and poignant immediacy. Wrenching, occasionally peevish, at times darkly funny, and always deeply felt, Toth’s intimate, unsparing account reflects the realities of seeing a loved one out of life: the critical support of some friends and the disappearance of others; the elasticity of time, infinitely slow and yet in such short supply; the sheer physicality of James’s decline and the author’s own loneliness; the practical challenges—the right food, the right wheelchair, the right hospital bed—all intricately interlocking parts of the act of loving and caring for someone who in so many ways is fading away.

“We all need someone to hear us,” Toth says of the millions who devote their days to the care of a loved one. Her memoir is at once an eloquent expression of that need and an opening for others. No Saints around Here is the beginning of a conversation in which so many of us may someday find our voices.

More books from University of Minnesota Press

Cover of the book Methodology of the Oppressed by Susan Allen Toth
Cover of the book Reading Writing Interfaces by Susan Allen Toth
Cover of the book Object-Oriented Feminism by Susan Allen Toth
Cover of the book Creating the Witness by Susan Allen Toth
Cover of the book Made to Hear by Susan Allen Toth
Cover of the book Playing with Feelings by Susan Allen Toth
Cover of the book Global Gangs by Susan Allen Toth
Cover of the book Abolitionist Geographies by Susan Allen Toth
Cover of the book Decolonization and the Decolonized by Susan Allen Toth
Cover of the book Civil Resistance by Susan Allen Toth
Cover of the book Digitizing Race by Susan Allen Toth
Cover of the book Avant-Garde Museology by Susan Allen Toth
Cover of the book Edges of the State by Susan Allen Toth
Cover of the book Sexuality in School by Susan Allen Toth
Cover of the book Miles Lord by Susan Allen Toth
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy