The Story of Forgetting: Stefan Merril Block
Abel Haggard is the only one left on the family farm in Dallas. His hermetic life is slowly closing in around him as he watches the years fall away, hoping his estranged daughter will return. Seth Waller is an awkward 15-year-old whose mother’s early-onset Alzheimer’s is rapidly unravelling their family.
He embarks on a search for his mother’s past in the hope that her genetic history will help move research closer to a cure. Through his fumbling investigation into the lives of other patients, we watch the ruthless march of this disease decimate a family tree. These two disparate lives are woven together by the story of Isidora – a paradise where the absence of memory means a miraculous freedom from pain, loss, regret and fear. The story of Isidora grows as it is traced through generations of those afflicted, binding the family together when the memory of each other dissolves.
A fabulous mix of the fantastical, the scientific, the trials of growing up and growing old, The Story of Forgetting is an elegant and heartbreaking debut from an exciting new writer who effortlessly sustains everything this novel sets out to achieve.