The Escorts

"The Escorts" tells of a songwriter's poignant journey through the reality of caring for those you love. As his wife is pulled into the darkness of Alzheimer's disease, he recalls his own path to finding the light, and the steps to keep the life of a helper from falling to pieces.

He faces the seven stages of the disease and the seven trials that any helper must overcome, the mistakes made, the problems encountered, the physical and metaphysical questions raised.

Initially entitled "Letters from the Front Line", in a ferocious ten-year battle with his wife's illness, with death, time, bureaucracy, money and family, "The Escorts" shows how the disease acts as a catalyst, intensifying people's reactions without itself being consumed, to the point in some of transforming love into hatred.

But the narrator discovers above all how vital music is for his wife and for himself, as the only palliative care. And in going once a week to the recording studio to sing the feelings that his wife can no longer hear, he meets Maria, who encourages and then inspires him, and he finds himself immersed in two love stories, one tragic, the other magic.

From the Highlands of Scotland to the great plains of the USA, from Greece to Normandy and Corsica, music and love are intertwined in a novel which little by little constitutes a survival kit for all those who are faced with a fatal disease.

And if in the end only music and love help him survive, the narrator shows how the two go hand in hand, are as vital for the patients as for the people who accompany them. Illuminating the text of "The Escorts", the lyrics of his love songs serve as a soundtrack to the novel, transforming it into that rare thing, a book that not only speaks to us, it sings.

Indeed, perhaps what best sums up "The Escorts" is the title track of the album "For You" * which accompanies the book:

"There is so much to learn about this lonely world,
As we ride from mountain high down to the sea.
Once upon a time I loved a girl
And for a starry while, she loved me."

Moved by song, steeped in loneliness but brimming with wit and humanity, and ultimately shot through with hope, "The Escorts" is a tribute to the depths of compassion and a monument to the fragile joy of life.

* https://malcolmduff.bandcamp.com/album/for-you