Approaching Wilderness is a collection of six stories dealing with dementia, originally published in various literary journals. Inspired by my late mother's struggles with the disease during her last years, I wanted to explore the questions that all family members must eventually face. Where does that beloved person go? What goes on in the secret life of her mind? While we may never have the answers to these questions, these stories, filled with humor and compassion, are one man's attempt to understand the tragic heartache of dementia.
Read what one reviewer writes on Amazon: "Gene describes the dementia-stricken with compassion and humor. In each story, the central characters cope with an increasing loss of touch with reality, and experience anger at and fear of what’s happening to them. In “The Woman Who Came for Lunch,” a couple is barely coping with daily living – the man gets lost walking around the block in his bathrobe and slippers, while the woman calls 9-1-1 to report a strange man hanging around her house. The story ends with an ironic twist, at least it seems ironic and unexpected to us who are looking in on the characters. But the characters are continually dealing with the unexpected, the mixed-up, and the half-remembered.
In “No Choice,” the ending takes us by surprise, but the core of the story is the day-to-day process of dementia, as it robs the struggling characters of their minds. Gene draws us in to the lives of the protagonists, and engenders sympathy for them even if they are wetting the bed and screaming at the top of their lungs. They struggle for some measure of independence, and we are rooting for them to maintain some dignity and receive recognition that they are adults and not babies.
In “A Letter of Intent” and “Approaching Wilderness” Gene describes the characters’ passionate, if unrealistic, desire to have control over their own lives, and the resulting anger at those who want to control them or put them away in a clean and sterile facility. Both stories have a twist at the end that underscores Gene’s mastery of the absurd and humorous, even in dire situations.
The stories are well written and fun to read, even though the topic could be depressing." By Susan Barlow