Author Balances the Personal with the Public in Writing about Direct-Care Work

Dancing with Rose: Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer's (York: Viking, 2007), a new book by Lauren Kessler, is the best book yet written on the lives of old people in residential care and the people who care for them. It is not the first book about working as a nurse's aide: Sallie Tisdale's 1987 classic, Harvest Moon: Portrait of a Nursing Home, was based on the author's work as an aide, and more recently, Thomas Edward Gass' Nobody's Home: Candid Reflections of a Nursing Home Aide (2004) gave a highly personalized and excessively candid report. Dancing with Rose, by contrast, balances the personal with the public, and Kessler tells her story with such skill and sensitivity that the reader will find it hard to put the book down.