A Miracle Cure for Alzheimer’s Disease?
I can’t help myself.
I wrote about a fictitious cure for leukemia in Essentially Yours (Tall Pines Mysteries,
book #2) because my cousin suffers from this dreaded disease and I wanted
so badly for someone to find a cure. I can’t help but imagine the day when a
real cure arrives, and somehow, I was compelled to write about it.
My grandmother died from Alzheimer’s Disease at the age of
ninety, in 1997. This woman was a powerhouse of personality. I based my
character Maddy Coté in the LeGarde Mysteries on her flamboyant and gushing
mannerisms in Gram’s honor.
Gram was a real rebel for her day. Imagine a “grandmother”
DYING her hair BLOND in the fifties! Whoa, now that was a shocker. She always
wore colorful outfits, loud chunky jewelry, gave loud smacking kisses, and
smashed me to her bosom when she saw me. And worst and most shocking of all, my
grandmother drank BEER. Yes, a green bottle of Narragansett accompanied every
meal.
Indeed. She was one wild woman.
And I adored her.
I will never forget how the illness stole her away from us,
and how I felt the first time she didn’t remember me. I also remember the
intensely personal and amazing moment when I sang one of “our songs,” to her,
and she came back to me for just a few minutes, calling me by name and saying
“Isn’t it nice to be with family?” just before the curtain fell again and she
disappeared forever.
Sigh. It still makes me very sad.
So, here I am seventeen years later, making up a miracle
cure for the dreaded disease that has affected so many people. I just hope it’s
prophetic.
In Lady Blues:
forget-me-not, my protagonist Gus LeGarde, befriends an elderly gentleman,
Kip Sterling, in a new nursing home for Alzheimer’s patients.
Gus refers to himself as “a
hopeless romantic, a Renaissance man caught in the twenty-first
century.” No stranger to passion or heartache, Gus lavishes love on his
family and dog as he mourns the loss of his lifetime soul mate, Elsbeth, in the
first book of the series, Double Forté. He
teaches music at Conaroga University, imparting the love of the classics to his
young students. Gus is passionate about French Impressionist painters,
gardening, and cooking lavish gourmet meals for his family and
friends. His rambling, 1811 Greek Revival farm house lies among the
rolling hills and bucolic splendor of the Genesee Valley. He plays Chopin
etudes to clear his mind and feed his soul, and has an impeccable inner moral
compass. By the time we get to Lady Blues, book ten in the series, he has
fallen in love with and married Camille Coté, Maddy’s daughter.
Now, back to our story about the miracle.
When a new drug called Memorphyl starts working on Kip and
memories start to bubble to the surface in this fascinating fellow, all kinds
of trouble is stirred up. But one persistent memory keeps on bugging him, and
he asks Gus for help.
Back in 1946, Kip lost the love of his life, Miss Arabella
Mae Dubois, affectionately known as Bella, a lusty and talented blues singer he
met in the Harlem clubs. Kip is obsessed with finding her, and Gus promises to
help.
Now that I think about it, the Bella I created here actually
has quite a bit in common with my grandmother, personality-wise. Hmm. Interesting
parallels, I think. Bella and Kip, a biracial couple in a very intolerant age,
were quite the rebels, themselves.
Wouldn't it be great if someday, somewhere, somehow, we
really do get a cure for Alzheimer’s? What if all the memories came pouring
back, and patients in nursing homes began to be released back to their
families?
I love the idea. Hey, maybe if I write about it enough,
it’ll come true someday!
Music professor Gus
LeGarde is just doing a favor for a friend when he agrees to play piano for
church services at a local nursing home. He doesn’t expect to be drawn into a
new friendship with an elderly Alzheimer’s patient dubbed “the music man” or to
stumble across a decades-old mystery locked inside the man’s mind.
Octogenarian Kip
Sterling doesn’t know his own name—but he speaks Gus’s language, spouting jazz
terms like “cadence” and “interlude” and “riff.” He’s also obsessed with “his
Bella,” but nobody knows who she is.
When Kip is given a
new drug called Memorphyl, he starts to remember bits and pieces of his life.
Gus learns Bella was Kip’s first and only love, but their relationship was
shrouded in scandal. Intrigued, Gus agrees to help search for her. Could she
still be alive?
Horrified when the miracle drug suddenly stops working and patients begin
to backslide, Gus panics. Can he help Kip find his beloved Bella before his
newfound memories disappear?
Bio:
Aaron Paul Lazar writes to soothe his soul.
The author of three mystery series, Lazar enjoys the Genesee Valley countryside
in upstate New York, where his characters embrace life, play with their dogs
and grandkids, grow sumptuous gardens, and chase bad guys. Visit his website at
lazarbooks.com.
Twilight Times Books by multi-award
winning author, Aaron Lazar:
VIRTUOSO (~2014)
LADY BLUES (2014)
MURDER ON THE SACANDAGA (~2014)
STANDALONES
DEVIL’S LAKE (2014)
WRITING ADVICE:
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