Biography
I am a Midwestern farmer's daughter, the second child of
five. A happy, healthy childhood was marred by our mother's
repeated illnesses. One of my early memories, at age four,
was my mother in a hospital bed, showing us a bandage that
covered her shoulder-to-waist wound from spinal surgery.
The demands of living on a farm combined with our mother's
health problems required all of us to do daily chores. Well
into my adult life I felt that I was more of a "physical"
being than a spiritual or emotional one.
As an adult, I lived for a time in Texas. The places I saw
and people I met have found their way into The Nursing
Home Fugitive. I thoroughly enjoyed the new experiences
and an expanded outlook on life, but it felt even better
when my husband and I came back to Illinois six years ago.
I did not make a conscious choice to become a writer. I
slid into it by accident. While working for a major insurance
company, a vice-president asked me to write a paper, explaining
a complex method of measuring performance. The experience
taught me that I liked the process of choosing just the
right words to explain things that don't readily make sense.
I went on to spend ten years as a technical writer, before
attempting to write fiction. My first novel was cathartic,
dealing with a kindness I had failed to perform for a boy
who later died. This work has never been published, and
probably never will be.
I still work as a technical writer part-time, but I have
been fortunate to become involved in a more interesting
subject than work measurement. Since December of 2003, I
have been helping a local government agency edit and format
their emergency response plans. The horrendous prospect
of more terrorist attacks is one that no one wants to face,
but we must. None of the work I do for the agency will ever
be released to the public, but in a small way I am making
a contribution. Working part-time allows me to spend an
hour or two each morning, and one full day a week on my
own projects. And perhaps the people I am meeting now will
one day help to define the characters in another novel.
The author who made the earliest and most enduring impression
was D.H. Lawrence, because his words evoke such strong visual
imagery. When it comes to contemporary authors I read Joyce
Carol Oates and Larry McMurtry - Oates for the seamless
flow of her words, and McMurtry for the humanity in his
stories.
About The Nursing Home
Fugitive
The drive to write this book occurred when my husband’s
grandmother faced her final illness. Visiting her in the
nursing home was my first prolonged experience with that
environment. The price this lady paid to negate her life
was too great. Then I thought of my own parents and how
they might fare in this situation. I knew that my father,
after a life of independence and hard manual labor, would
not go easily into a warehousing situation. At this time
I also saw a documentary about a young man who had suffered
a stroke that robbed him of the ability to store experiences
into memory. The concept of living moment to moment seemed
to dramatize the trauma of approaching life’s end.
So it was by combining three people that I created Clive
Parisi and his attitude toward his last days.
The novel took over a year to write and, after trying to
sell it unsuccessfully for a while, I went back and rewrote
large portions, attempting to make it more hopeful and humorous,
emphasizing that the challenges Clive faced only enhanced
the rewards of living life on his own terms. In all, I spent
eighteen months writing and revising. In that time, I came
to enjoy all the characters in the book, especially the
eccentric men and women populating the fringe of the story.
By wrapping life’s challenges in humorous and thoughtful
language I hope to make difficulties easier to face. Stories
help and stories heal in ways that should be shared. My
hope is that patients and their caregivers will use the
book to facilitate discussion. By asking each other how
they feel about what Clive did they might find it easier
to talk frankly about their own choices and how they would
like to face them.
Read or download
a chapter of THE NURSING HOME FUGITIVE
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