The renowned "New Yorker "writer and Pulitzer Prize finalist Lore Segal--whom "T
he New York Times" declared "closer than anyone to writing the Great American No
vel"--delivers a hilarious, poignant and profoundly moving tale of living, lovin
g and aging in America today
At Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, doctors have notic
ed a marked uptick in Alzheimer's patients. People who seemed perfectly lucid ju
st a day earlier suddenly show signs of advanced dementia. Is it just normal agi
ng, or an epidemic? Is it a coincidence, or a secret terrorist plot?
In the lo
oking-glass world of "Half the Kingdom--"where terrorist paranoia and end-of-the
-world hysteria mask deeper fears of mortality; where parents' and their grown c
hildren's feelings vacillate between frustration and tenderness; and where the b
roken medical system leads one character to quip, "Kafka wrote slice-of-life fic
tion"--all is familiar and yet slightly askew.
Lore Segal masterfully interwea
ves her characters' lives--lives that, for good or for ill, all converge in Ceda
r's ER--into a funny, tragic, and tender portrait of how we live today.
