Review: Strong enough to HOPE!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 9, 2014
This novel raises some important questions about the value of life, its relationship to death and the quality of life as people age. "We want to hope,” Betty Frost said. “But I suppose we spend our time going from one useless dream to another. Dreams we know that will never be fulfilled, dreams that in truth only take us farther and farther away from the truth.”Betty is one of many residents of a small nursing home counting the remaining minutes and hours of her less than satisfactory and downright disappointing life where the author epitomizes life, 80 Plus style, as a choice between daily green peas and death.The author’s vivid description of the joyless nursing home environment encourages readers to observe day to day resident life in a typical nursing home where the highlight of the day more often than not is another tasteless meal that culminates with residents trashing their green peas on the dining hall floor…again!Disheartened and equally discouraged Nurse Steel struggles with the day to day nursing home issues such as limited staff and restrictive laws as well as her personal desire to make sense of her life and its purpose.The novel explores the concept of truth as understood and experienced differently by the characters. Resisting the inevitable, “…we are useless,” as expressed by one resident, author Robert Swisher invites readers to join his characters in their search for meaning.This novel is a great commentary on our need to find ‘purpose’ in our lives. Without it, we have no hope.