Caregiving and Climate Change Deftly Interwoven in “Melted Away”

While there are hundreds of books on general caregiving and specifically, dementia care, I usually leave the reviews to the phenomenal group Alzauthors. My focus remains on the nuts and bolts of caregiving. That said, now and then an unusual book comes to my attention and I decide to feature it if not technically offer a review. Melted Away: A Memoir of Climate Change and Caregiving in Peru by Barbara Drake-Vera is one of those rare books.

Years ago, I’d interviewed Barbara about her caregiving experience in Peru, so I knew this would be a remarkable book highlighting obvious differences between family caregiving in Peru and caregiving in the US.

Gorgeously written and intensely personal, Drake-Vera takes us along as she recounts her childhood and difficult relationship with her father. She skillfully intertwines the ravages of global warming with her father’s decline and her own caregiving challenges.

In a compelling analogy, she compares shrinking tropical glaciers to the shrinking mass in an Alzheimer’s afflicted brain. As she observes her mother’s body after death, she notices that her mother’s hands, once twisted and deformed from rheumatoid arthritis, had somehow straightened. She muses about how, while her father couldn’t remember what was said a moment ago, he was still able to learn Spanish from his caregivers. Insights sparkle throughout.

Enough said. This is a fascinating memoir that I enthusiastically recommend.

Published by LSU Press, 2024. Available there as well as on Amazon and other book retailers.

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