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In that time, they’ve lived through a variety of conditions, including his battle with cancer, diabetes, and now Alzheimer’s. This is because there’s not going to be enough nursing homes for all of us who are going to have dementia.īE: The two main characters in your novel, Gregory Tate, who has the disease, and his wife, Diane Tate, had been married for more than three decades. Golden: One of the things that’s going to have to happen as a society, as we respond to Alzheimer’s disease, is that the needs–emotional, psychological, and financial–of caregivers will have to become much more recognized and supported. I wanted to tell a story of the impact of the disease, not only on Gregory, who develops it, but also on his wife and children as they respond to it.īE: How important is it to have education and informational resources for Alzheimer’s throughout the African American community? That, in itself, is a story that hasn’t been told so much.

Even when you have someone who has Alzheimer’s in an assisted care or memory care unit, the family still has to advocate and monitor the care. It’s very different from a disease like cancer, because people with Alzheimer’s are often cared for by their loved ones. But, also, the responsibilities that the disease imposes on family members is enormous. They die first, in terms of their family being able to recognize them, and then they die physically. But Alzheimer’s is a sort of ‘devilish’ disease, whereas, the person who has the disease dies twice.

One of the reasons the is important, is because, when we talk about Alzheimer’s, we talk a lot about the impact of the disease on those who actually have it. The novel is essentially, as you say, a love story. It’s certainly not the only novel that deals with it, but it’s one of few. It seemed to be something that hadn’t been written, hadn’t been done much–with African Americans dealing with Alzheimer’s disease. Once I thought of the idea of doing a novel about this, it seemed very intriguing.

I put it aside, and essentially, this idea came to me. I had been working on another novel and wasn’t making much progress that I was satisfied with. I think, a lot of times in the creative process, we get called, as artists, to do certain work. Marita Golden: Actually, it wasn’t my choice to write this book.