Four Umbrellas

A writing couple searches for answers when Alzheimer's causes one of them to lose the place where stories come from—memory.

At the age of fifty-three, Tony walks away from a life of journalism and into an unknown future dogged by self-doubt and financial worry. June is forty-eight years old then, a writer and a teacher, and over the following nine years she watches as her husband gradually changes—in interests, goals, and behavior—until Tony has a sudden fall, ending their life as they have known it.

While it will be another seven years before they receive a diagnosis of Alzheimer's, the signs of dementia are all around. A suitcase Tony packs for a trip contains four umbrellas jammed into every available space, a visual symbol of cognitive looping. But how far back do these signs go? The two of them begin looking, researching, and remembering—and make some surprising discoveries about Alzheimer's that lead to one undeniable conclusion: this is not an old person's disease.