by Larry Duberstein (Author)
"You sing your songs and maybe you go for a walk or a beer, but at some point your brain must remind you that your audience is back there dying."
From the author of The Marriage Hearse, a New York Times New & Noteworthy selection, and The Handsome Sailor, a New York Times Notable Book, comes a new novel that explores the little-known world of hospice singing-home visit concerts for the dying-through the surprising relationship between one of the singers, 66-year-old Ian Nelson, and a beautiful young woman, Anita Richardson, to whom his choir sings.
Ian, retired from a career as a high school guidance counselor, long married, and the father of two, considers himself an ordinary man. He is intelligent, engaging, more attractive than he seems to know, and, as the son of a minister, determinedly moral. Meeting Anita threatens it all. His attraction and connection to this much younger woman-who, to complicate matters, is dying-upends his quiet New England life.
In richly detailed, finely honed prose threaded through with Larry Duberstein's characteristic humor and compassion, The Hospice Singer explores the hidden complexities of life in small town America.