in 1984, when Sharon Brown's mother Betty became terminally ill with bone cancer, Sharon and her husband (writer Andreas Schroeder) brought Betty home to live her last weeks with them and their two young daughters. With the help of her family, trusted professionals and close-knit community of friends, Brown helped her mother die with dignity, surrounded by the strength of love. Her unflinching story, taken from the journals she kept during the intense last year of her mother's life, is by turns tragic and hilarious, harrowing and tender. It is must reading for anyone who has or ever will care for a cherished loved one who is dying, and for any front-line palliative care worker.

Sharon Brown lives in Roberts Creek, British Columbia, with her partner Andreas Schroeder. They have two grown daughters.

Sharon Brown's profile page

• Winner, Hubert Evans Non-fiction Award

"It is a love story dealing with ordinary lives made luminous through courage and caring . . . a heart-wise journey into the dark and scattered regions of illness and loss, in which a mother's death is absorbed into the intimacy of family sharing and values richly glossed."
-Sylvia Fraser

Sylvia Fraser

"As I grow old, and see how immeasurably sad life is, I depend on the kind of spirituality people achieve when they locate their best self. What you have written is beautiful."
-June Callwood

June Callwood