"The 47 vignettes in Seidel's lightly fictionalized memoir lets readers feel what it's like for a naturally skeptical, yet persistently naèive, older woman to watch her parents age out of life, and to reflect on stories she couldn't appreciate until she'd worn some years herself. The elders are quintessentially American, from the shell shocked grandfather to the mother secretly spitting out pills at the Lucky Stroke Nursing Home last year."--Back cover