“Her Beautiful Brain is a daring and ambitious memoir that bestows unexpected rewards on the reader.”
―David Takami, Seattle Times
“Unflinching, tragic and compassionate.”
―Shelf Awareness
“In this poetic memoir, Hedreen mixes details from her own life with details about her mother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s disease… Candid, sometimes funny and always poignant.”
―Booklist
Arlene was a twice-divorced, once-widowed copper miner’s daughter who raised six kids singlehandedly and got her bachelor’s and master’s degree at forty so she could support her family. In her late fifties, she started showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease—and in the two decades that followed, her children were forced to stand helplessly by as their mother’s once-beautiful brain slowly unraveled.
In this poignant memoir, Ann Hedreen gives shattering insight into what it is to watch your mother—a woman you once thought of as invincible—begin to disappear. From Seattle to Haiti to the mine-gouged Finntown neighborhood in Butte, Montana where Arlene was born and raised, Her Beautiful Brain tells the heartbreaking story of a daughter’s love for a mother lost in the wilderness of an unpredictable and harrowing illness.
Author: Ann Hedreen
Publication Date: September 16, 2014
