Without anyone in his life to interview, he decides to head to a local nursing home, Hillview Manor, and ask if he can interview one of the residents there.

From a young age he had to be a parent to not only his brother, but also his mother, who would be gone for days at a time and the responsibility fell on Joe to find her and drag her back home from whatever bar she was holed up in.Īlways busy with class and working the door at a local bar, he finds himself increasingly close to his deadline for an assignment for which he has to find someone older and write a brief biography. He has a very tumultuous relationship with his alcoholic mother, feels the weight of responsibility for his eighteen year old Autistic brother Jeremy, and his father has been absent his whole life. The main character, Joe Talbert, is a college student who is desperate to make a better life for himself than the one he grew up in. I also loved that he captured the weight of responsibility someone has when caring for a family member who is disabled, and the guilt that they have for feeling burdened by them at times. He did an extremely good job of conveying the fear, protectiveness, and fierce love someone with an Autistic brother or sister feels toward their sibling. What drew me to it was fact that the main character had an Autistic brother and I have an Autistic sister, so I was curious to see how the author would handle their relationship. I was perusing books on Amazon and in the “Based on Your Purchase History” section I saw it, read the description, and decided to buy it.

I stumbled upon this book as a happy accident.

The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens