|
A book that gives us food for thought on what needs fixing in American Healthcare. These short vignettes are honest, charming and gritty. We meet these characters...some are broken and need healing, others are whole and can’t heal. Ironside has captured the regional essence of the Tri-State area with compassion and love...
~ Francis Rella, Author of Lullaby of Broadway |
Welcome to a tale of the pining of people from New York City in the 1940’s. They are the veterans of World War II, a successful leg model who strolled through Central Park in her hay day, and young men who were fortunate enough to watch the Dodgers play at Ebbets Field. This story goes back to when the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn and trolleys rolled along the streets.
Years later, these people find each other in a nursing home in New Jersey. They sit in wheelchairs and long for the past. They seem to forget that they are in wheelchairs or that they are in their late eighties, but they do recall losing their youth, beauty and vitality, somewhere along the line. Why else would they be here, in a nursing home, in 2012? |
About dovetailing
The story shifts towards the present, to a group of women employed at the nursing home, whose jobs require rehabilitation of the elderly. They struggle with modern-day issues of dating, the mundanity of marriage, and the impossible risk of having children. All of this, with the chatter of the patients in their wheelchairs around them.
The protagonist, June Michalowski, quickly becomes enmeshed in the lives of the elderly. June’s yearning to return to the bygone era of her patients is counterbalanced by the medical staff with whom she works. Her coworkers Ashley, Georgie and Lucia, all view nursing home living differently. Ashley is obsessed with getting spray-tans and manicures, yet she weeps about her patients on her commute home from work. Georgie has an elderly mother and wants no part of the life-preserving measures that she witnesses each day for her own future. Lucia has a father with mental illness, and finds herself drawn to a young horse jockey with schizophrenia, who also winds up in this same nursing home.
The protagonist, June Michalowski, quickly becomes enmeshed in the lives of the elderly. June’s yearning to return to the bygone era of her patients is counterbalanced by the medical staff with whom she works. Her coworkers Ashley, Georgie and Lucia, all view nursing home living differently. Ashley is obsessed with getting spray-tans and manicures, yet she weeps about her patients on her commute home from work. Georgie has an elderly mother and wants no part of the life-preserving measures that she witnesses each day for her own future. Lucia has a father with mental illness, and finds herself drawn to a young horse jockey with schizophrenia, who also winds up in this same nursing home.
Inspiration
I began writing this work of fiction to capture the stories of the elderly from a fresh perspective. It was both awful and healing to unravel my own bias against the frailty of aging. We will all be old and frail one day. It is just a question of time and the level of frailty we will individually reach. As I kept writing, it became important to unveil what actually happens in the American healthcare system towards the end of life. (For instance, do you know what a Living Will is? Do you know why you might need one?)
Even more importantly, I wanted to illuminate what is left behind of each of us after death. The essence of every life, every story must go somewhere. A dovetail joint in carpentry terms is a way to interconnect wood in a distinctive pattern. This book explores the interconnection of lives in a similar way. Between the young and the old; the living and the dead; from this world to the next.
Even more importantly, I wanted to illuminate what is left behind of each of us after death. The essence of every life, every story must go somewhere. A dovetail joint in carpentry terms is a way to interconnect wood in a distinctive pattern. This book explores the interconnection of lives in a similar way. Between the young and the old; the living and the dead; from this world to the next.