My First Time: Barbara J. King

The First Book My Mother Didn’t Read
On my bookshelf at home sits Still Alice by Lisa Genova. The novel, which tells the story of cognitive psychology professor Alice Howland’s struggles with early-onset Alzheimer’s, is 292 pages long; nestled at page 265 is my mother’s bookmark. Before she could finish reading, my mother, Elizabeth King, died of COPD and vascular dementia at age 88.

Through her 80s, thanks to the crush of those oxygen-robbing diseases, my mother read increasingly slowly and...