Take Me Home: Parkinson's, My Father, Myself

by Jonathan Taylor

When Jonathan Taylor was eight his father began to act strangely. One day he suddenly couldn't remember his own daughter’s name, and he then began to shake, to drive badly, and to forget who and where he was. Increasingly Jonathan’s father would utter "help, help, help” repeatedly, even if no one was in the room. Doctors diagnosed Parkinson's disease and dementia, and for the next 13 years Jonathan and his family cared for his father. This is the darkly humorous and heart-wrenching story of a son's struggle for recognition from a father transformed mentally and physically by a ruinous disease. Along the way Jonathan attempts to unveil his father's strange and largely secret past, to uncover the man who led a school before he became a trembling sufferer who sometimes mistook his son for Humphrey Bogart or a giraffe.

Genres: Nonfiction

288 pages, Hardcover

First published July 2, 2007