Hello to all readers and writers in the blogosphere.
I hope you are enjoying my new “featured Book of the week column†and I certainly hope you went out and picked up your own copy of Three: An Electric Eclectic Book by P.J. Roscoe. If so, please share it with your friends and leave a review. You’ll let the author know how much you enjoyed her book. Reviews also help online book retailors like Amazon show an author’s books to more customers.
This week, I have another wonderful book to showcase for you. The book is entitled My Ideal Partner: How I Met, Married, and Cared for the Man I Loved Despite Debilitating Odds, written by Abbie Johnson Taylor:
In September of 2005, Abbie Johnson married Bill Taylor. She was in her mid-forties, and he was nineteen years older. Three months later, Bill suffered the first of two strokes that paralyzed his left side and confined him to a wheelchair. Abbie Johnson Taylor, once a registered music therapist, uses prose and poetry to tell the story of how she met and married her husband, then cared for him for six years despite her visual impairment. At first, there was a glimmer of hope that Bill would walk again, but when therapists gave up on him seven months after his second stroke, Taylor resigned herself to being a permanent family caregiver.
She discusses learning to dress him and transfer him from one place to another, sitting up with him at night when he couldn’t urinate or move his bowels, and dealing with doctors and bureaucrats to obtain necessary equipment and services. There were happy times like when she played the piano or guitar and sang his favorite songs, or when they went out to eat or to a concert. She also explains how she purchased a wheelchair accessible van and found people to drive it so they wouldn’t always depend on the local para-transit service’s limited hours. In the end, she describes the painful decision she and Bill made to move him to a nursing home when he became too weak for her to care for him in September of 2012. He seemed to give up on life and passed away a month later.
Excerpt:
This couldn’t be happening, I told myself, as, in my underwear, I paced the upstairs hall in Grandma’s house between my aunt’s old bedroom and the bathroom. It was the afternoon of September 10, 2005. In the yard, I heard strains of music from the string duo my father hired for the occasion and the chatter of arriving guests. Soon the ceremony would start. Would I have to walk down the aisle on my father’s arm in my underwear? Where was my sister–in–law, Kathleen, who agreed to be matron of honor?
Besides My Ideal Partner, Abbie Johnson Taylor is the author of a romance novel and two poetry collections and is working on another novel. Her work has appeared in Magnets and Ladders, The Weekly Avocet, and other publications. She lives in Sheridan, Wyoming.
Connect with Abbie by visiting the following links:
Website:
http://www.abbiejohnsontaylor.com
Blog:
https://abbiescorner.wordpress.com
Facebook:
If you have a book you’d like to showcase on my blog, you can connect with me in one of two ways. Send an email to annwrites75@gmail.com with “Featured book of the week†in the subject line, or visit https://annharrisonauthor.com/contact and fill out my contact form. Please tell me that you would like to have your book featured on my blog in the comments field and I’ll be happy to send you my questionnaire.
I post book features on Saturdays, so if there’s a particular week you’d like your book to be showcased, please send me your completed questionnaire by no later than Thursday, so I can create the post and email it back for your approval on Friday. When sending me your questionnaire, please attach any photos you’d like me to include with your book feature.
Until next time, happy reading and writing, and God bless.
Reblogged this on My Corner and commented:
Thanks to blogger Ann Barnes for featuring my latest book on her blog today. She also mentions the book she featured last week, so you might want to check that out as well. Happy reading.
Thank you, Ann, for featuring my book this week.
It was my pleasure.