(HUDSON, N.Y.) – There will be a reception celebrating the publication of Riptides & Solaces Unforeseen, a memoir by Debby Mayer, at McDaris Fine Art (623 Warren St.) on Sunday, June 2, 2013, from 3 to 5p.m. The event will include a short reading at 4 p.m., and book will be available for purchases and signing. Refreshments will be served.
Part mystery, part love story, part report from the medical front in the United States today, Riptides relates the fast-onset brain cancer that ripped through a strong, healthy man and led to his death four months later at the age of fifty-six. The book is a searing chronology of the effects of devastating illness, of being caught in the maw of hospitals, of unthinkable decision-making and small, unexpected solaces. Tightly written, fact-based, it is never maudlin, and it offers an element of hope without sentimentality.
Debby Mayer’s blog, 2becomes1: widowhood for the rest of us, can be found at debbymayer.blogspot.com. An excerpt from Riptides was awarded a grant in creative nonfiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Debby Mayer is also the author of Sisters: A Novel (Putnam’s, Berkley). Her short fiction and journalism have been widely published. She retired from the Publications Office at Bard College as editorial director and is now a contributing editor at The Columbia Paper. She lives in Hudson, N.Y.
Riptides is published by Epigraph Books of Rhinebeck, N.Y. It is available in paperback ($14.95) and Kindle ($9.99) editions.