... makes you feel as though a kindred soul is speaking to you.' - Readers' Favorite At the age of sixty, Gretchen Staebler promises to spend one year in her childhood home caring for her stubbornly independent ninety-six-year-old mother - sort of a middle-aged gap year. Then her mother will move to assisted living and she will return to her own independent life. It doesn't go as planned. Rather than a retrospective, this mother-daughter story unfolds in real time with gripping honesty, bringing the reader along with the narrator through the struggle, doubts, and complexities of caregiving and daughterhood - and the beacons of light. Penetrating the fog of her mother's advancing dementia and myriad health issues with humor, frustration, and compassion - and wine - Staebler slowly comes to.