The Alzheimer's Disease Bookstore

Beyond The Thin Line

Publisher's description:

Robert E. Gard has written a powerful book about "one of the great human dramas and tragedies of out time"---Alzheimer's Disease. It is sure to be welcomed by the families of patients, by those who care for patients, and by all who seek a deeper and more human understanding of this baffling disorder.

In fictional synthesis, Gard traces the life of "Harry McDare," a patient in a skilled nursing facility rest home. Harry was a World War ll prisoner of war and a participant in the infamous 1945 "Black March" of POWs from the Stalag Luft lV. A strong and well-liked figure during his military service and working career, Harry closes his life in the shadow of Alzheimer's. It is Harry's story---which has many parallels to that of a close friend of the author's---that forms the core of this enriching exploration.

"Knowing that there is no known cure," says Gard, "many simply draw a curtain across their lives of stricken friends or relatives; simply write them off as never more having dreams, or even pasts that can be recalled. I do not buy or sympathize with that attitude."

It is Gard's carrying nature, his long-held ability to look deeply into the lives of others, and his facility in expressing the fullness of these lives, that lends to this book a richness and meaning seldom found in approaching so difficult a subject. There has never been another book like it.

Reviews:

"Robert Gard, founder of the Wisconsin Idea Theatre, has produced an electrifying drama about people. He has given them a stage filled with both light and shadow. And he has delayed their final curtain long enough for us to bask in the joy of their presence. This is NOT a scientific treatise on a morose subject: it IS a good novel," Clarence De Spain, Wisconsin Academy Review

"Gard has taken us as far as we might, realistically, ever go into the mind and spirit of the Alzheimer's victim---without being one ourselves," Jim Blatt, The Capital Times.

You can now order the book listed below directly on the Internet from Lake Solitude Media's Alzheimer's Bookstore in affiliation with Amazon.com Books. Click on the link below.