Tara Holley's mother Dawn Elgin is diagnosed with schizophrenia, and Tom Dodge's mother Juanita has Alzheimer's disease, but the books are not about the mothers. They are about the children, about the authors. Schizophrenia is, overwhelmingly, a disease that becomes apparent in late adolescence or early adulthood. Dawn Elgin became ill near the time Tara Holley was born. Holley has never known a time when her mother was well.
Schizophrenia eats identity.
Holley can hear stories about what Elgin was like as a child or a teenager. Some authorities describe schizophrenia as a process. Often after twenty or thirty years, the process has run its course and departs. The person then is not really well, because the person has no memory of being well as an adult. In contrast, Alzheimer's usually becomes apparent in late middle or old age, when the task of becoming an adult, for better or worse, is largely complete.