Where the Light Is Brighter

Where the Light Is Brighter is the touching, bittersweet story of life in a long-term care facility, told mostly through the sharp eyes of 98-year-old Edith, who has an opinion on everything-and everyone-and a lifetime of memories that are slowly slipping away. She enters River's Edge reluctantly, just before New Year's, at the insistence of her son, William, but she plans to be back home in time to put chubby Cupid on her mantel, then swap him out in March for her madly grinning leprechaun. As we accompany Edith through her first year of living in this "never place," the place on the hill where no one wants to be, we meet a cast of characters of advancing age. But despite her dread of the darkness within-a fear we all share about our elderly futures-brightness breaks through at every turn. The story is structured around holidays and the decorations with which the River's Edge residents mark time, and as Edith settles in, surrenders to a self-appointed "welcoming committee," and reluctantly makes friends, she begins to feel more and more at home. Written by a woman who works in the field, Where the Light Is Brighter shatters stereotypes and preconceived notions about the proverbial "old folks home" as we meet the forever young-at-heart folks who challenge our beliefs by greeting their final years with grace, enlarging our hearts as they enliven River's Edge.