Publisher's Synopsis
"'Promise me something, Gal,' he said. 'Anything,' I answered. 'Swear that you will put a gun to my head if I wind up like my father.' Nancy Stearns Bercaw crossed her fingers the day she promised to kill her father. Instead she promised herself to one day tell his story, and in this unflinchingly honest memoir she recounts her life with Dr. Beauregard Lee Bercaw, or "Beau," who became a neurologist in response to watching his own father deteriorate and die of Alzheimer's. For many years Beau kept an autopsied brain in a jar on the desk in his office as a constant reminder of the struggle that he waged against the disease first with his patients, and ultimately for himself as he succumbed to its effects. This is also the story of the author's own struggle to establish her identity and to navigate the treacherous and ever-changing emotional terrain of her relationship with her father, as she literally traveled the world in her quest to m
