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by Mary Jane Nealon (Author)
In this collection of vignettes--heartbreaking and often humorous--Nealon explores caregiving as both sacred practice and human risk.
She looks back to her relationship with a father devastated by the early death of her brother; to tending men--some with AIDS, some drunk, some sober--living in Bowery flophouses; to confronting racism; to the quiet instruction of a dog who teaches attention by gazing back.
The essays ask what price we pay when we offer ourselves wholeheartedly to one another, and what it means to remain open to being more than human in a fractured world.
Author Biography
Mary Jane Nealon worked as a nurse for forty-seven years. She retired as the Director of Innovations at a community health center network in Montana. She received an MFA from Warren Wilson College. She has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and was the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Fellow in 2004-2005. She has two poetry collections: Rogue Apostle and Immaculate Fuel, both from Four Way Books. Her memoir, Beautiful Unbroken: One Nurse's Life was published by Graywolf Press. She lives in Wall Township, NJ.
