A Place in Time: Care Givers for Their Elderly
(NY: Praeger Books, 1993)

The sequel to Mirrored Lives, A Place in Time tells the personal stories of normal people, grandchildren, children, and spouses who have chosen to care for their aging and fragile relations. In a style reminiscent of Studs Terkel, Tom Koch collected these narratives on the front lines of the battle for senior care. From Toronto, Canada, to Honolulu, Hawaii, he met with, listened to, and recorded the experiences of an extraordinary group of people who care for ailing senior relatives at home. This is what it is like, they say, to be with and to love another who is simultaneously old and ill.

Like Oliver Sacks, the author then uses this collection to ask: What can we learn from the experiences of others? What can these frank and intimate stories teach us. Based on the narrative collection, he allows the narrators to answer why they care about and for these fragile seniors, and by implication, why we as a society should assist these efforts.

Reviews:

"Powerful first-person accounts of the daily stress of providing for an ill elderly person are the strongest part of this book . . . highly recommended." Library Journal.

"Each chapter gives a moving history of a caregiver's emotions and feelings. The author has been allowed into the caregivers' confidence. The descriptions of the pains and pleasures of the situation are vivid. Canadian Medical Association Journal.

"While the interviews reveal the reality of caregiving, they are not as interesting as Koch's very perceptive and inspiring analysis of the importance of caregiving in the context of the many dehumanizing aspects of modern life. 'What each care giver learned through caring is that one does not have to constantly improve, to become something stronger, or better, to function as a moral arbiter or financial genius. It is enough simply to be, to exist with one another,' Koch observers in his final chapter." Aging Magazine.

Order Information

Available from Praeger Books, a division of Greenwood Publishing Group
Ordered through bookstores, or directly from the publisher (1-800-225-5800).