"Conversations with My Mother, a Novel of Love, Hope, and Dementia on the Maine Coast" describes the changes in an elegant, empathetic Francophone, YVETTE ALLAIRE, as she is overtaken by old age and dementia. The story debuts when Yvette is in her late eighties and the coastal Maine town that she’s lived in most of her life is being transformed into a resort-like destination for vacationers and retirees from Boston and beyond. Focusing on Yvette’s relationship with DIANE, her acerbic care-giver daughter, and ROB, her peripatetic businessman son, the book examines the pair’s attempts to cope with the ramifications of Yvette’s physical and mental decline, including her potential removal to a nursing home and the sale of the family’s property to real-estate developers. Rendered in vivid, episodic chapters, the first-person, present-tense narrative evokes a strong sense of place and tells the Allaires’ story from a variously witty and elegiac perspective, drawing parallels between the beleaguered Yvette’s persistent kindness and the enduring beauty of Maine’s embattled coast. Ultimately more about hope than regret, the book suggests that the personality of an individual beset by dementia doesn’t always wholly disappear, just as the intrinsic appeal of a place, however ravaged, seldom entirely vanishes. Excerpt: PDF Uploaded