Any God-Given Day

Book excerpt: Kitty Arnold, the 29-year-old granddaughter of Mavis Peterson, struggles with the responsibility of taking care of her grandmother who is afflicted with Alzheimer's disease. After the death of her mother, Peggy, when Kitty was two, she came to live with her grandmother and together, they became a family. As her grandmother loses more and more of her short-term memory and dives deeper and deeper into her past, she makes Kitty aware of a secret that has been hidden in her family for decades. As Mavis remembers the events of her past in her moments of lucidity, she struggles to tell her granddaughter the truth about that past. But much of what Mavis wants to tell Kitty becomes lost in the wasteland that is Alzheimer's disease. Kitty's quest for the truth about her family leads her into her grandmother's past. As the mystery unfolds, we begin to understand the pain and frustration that this disease brings to those who must suffer through the different stages of memory loss.