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My Mother, Our Memories, and a Journey Through the Rocky Mountains
by Steph Jagger
Between Two Kingdoms meets Wild. In this heart wrenching and inspirational memoir a woman and her mother, who is suffering from Alzheimer's, embark on a road trip through national parks, revisiting the memories, and the mountains, that made them who they are.
Steph Jagger lost her mother before she lost her. Her mother, stricken with an incurable disease that slowly erases all sense of self, struggles to remember her favorite drink, her favorite song, and―perhaps most heartbreaking of all―Steph herself. Steph watches as the woman who loved and raised her slips away before getting the chance to tell her story, and so Steph makes a promise: her mother will walk it and she will write it.
Too aware of her mother's waning memory, Steph proposes that the two take a camping trip out to Montana―which her mother, on the urging of Steph's father, agrees to embark upon. An adventure full of horseback riding, hiking, and "tenting" out West quickly turns into one woman's reflection on childhood, motherhood, personhood―and what it means to love someone who doesn't quite remember the person she spent her lifetime becoming.
A staggeringly beautiful examination of how stories are passed down through generations and from Mother Nature, Everything Left to Remember brings us the wisdom of who our memories make us under the constellations of the vast Montana sky.
"With keen insight and thoughtful prose that captures both the emotions involved and the significance of the natural world in the author's life, she recalls their journey across the Rockies...A beautiful yet heart-wrenching tribute to the mother-daughter relationship." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Jagger offers a beautiful reflection on love, memory, and inheritance in this heartrending account of a road trip she took through Big Sky Country, one 'my mother will never remember and a journey I'll never forget'...This will cast a spell on fans of Cheryl Strayed and Glennon Doyle." - Publishers Weekly
"This grounded, readable, and gracefully written memoir is an interesting take on the road trip genre, particularly relatable to people affected by dementia." - Library Journal
"In this thoughtful and intimate memoir of a mother and daughter on a road trip, many destinations are reached - what it is to have Alzheimer's, what it is to love someone with Alzheimer's and who really is in the navigator's seat. Wonderful addition to the genre." - Gayatri Devi, author of The Spectrum of Hope: An Optimistic and New Approach to Alzheimer's Disease and Other Dementias
"This memoir is a gift. Steph Jagger writes with a combination of crisp humour, grace, and clarity that takes my breath away. This book shows us how to accept the steady parenting of Mother Nature, and how to open our heart to her love and magic ― even when we are facing the impossible." - Sarah Selecky, award-winning author of Radiant Shimmering Light
This information about Everything Left to Remember was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Steph Jagger is a sought-after mentor and coach whose offerings guide people toward a deeper understanding of themselves and their stories. Her work, including speaking and facilitating, lies at the intersection of loss, the nature of deep remembrance, and the personal journey of re-creation. Steph grew up in Vancouver, Canada and now lives and works on Bainbridge Island, WA. Everything Left to Remember is Steph's second book. Her first, Unbound, was published in 2017.
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