A Healing Touch: True Stories of Life, Death and Hospice
by Dale Marie Clark
I just finished reading it - the uncorrected galley, not for resale version that is. The book I have been known to expectantly and unbelievably call "our book". This is the book that many, many of us at HVWA have been waiting to see and touch and read for what seems like eternity when in fact it has been about 18 months from the day it was "conceived". That would be the day that Lee Duff brought his good friend and racquet ball buddy Rick Russo by here for a visit. We chatted - Lee, Rick and I - for about two hours that fateful afternoon and in the end Rick proposed how he and some fellow Maine authors might give HVWA a much needed and appreciated financial boost. I remember it so clearly: Rick said "you have stories here." My reply - "everyone who walks through our doors has a story. There are people sitting in the room down the hall as we speak who have incredible stories." And that is how it evolved. Rick and his Maine author friends have the talent to build characters in prose, and we have the characters. Together we created a book that will take your breath away. Published by Down East Books, it will show up on the shelves in April. You will not want to miss reading it!
You can purchase a copy NOW at the Down East Books website HERE.
Listen to these interviews with Pulitzer Prize author Richard Russo about A Healing Touch: true stories of life, death and hospice:
NPR Weekend Edition with Simon Scott on 5-31-08
NPR Here and Now with Robin Young on May 12, 2008
View these recent articles from the Morning Sentinel and Chicago Tribune
'A Healing Touch' highlights hospice
BY ZACH DIONNE
Kennebec Journal & Waterville Sentinel
06/20/2008
Chicago Tribune
Sunday June 15, 2008
A Healing Touch Book Review by Anne Stein
Thanks to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Russo (“Empire Falls”) and five other Maine-based authors, these painful stories about life and death are beautiful pieces of non-fiction. Illustrated with woodcut drawings, each writer had access to the thoughts and feelings of the family members going through the darkest moments of loss. Each story ends, however, with the recovery and understanding gained from time and the help of the local hospice counseling.
That was the bottom, wrote Russo, describing the thoughts of a man who no longer felt like living after putting his wife into a long-term care home.
It lasted a while but not forever. Despair, like a car thief, has paid him a visit, gained entry, the looked around, glimpsed his host’s great reservoir of strength and optimism, and thought to himself, why struggle when the next vehicle was probably unlocked, unprotected, an invitation.
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