Mother of three, Marie Valenta, was fifty-four when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer 's disease. The former primary school teacher had rarely experienced a day 's illness before this shattering diagnosis. Her husband, Tom, became her primary carer. He describes the daily agony of seeing his wife slowly succumb to this cruel, degenerative disease. Ultimately he gives her up to a nursing home which he sees as his final act of capitulation and failure.

A successful lawyer remembers his boyhood in Nebraska and his friendship with an immigrant Bohemian girl.