The Last Moon Before Home — Barbara J. Dzikowski

Willow Trudeau is looking for the home she never had and for a father-Leon Ziemny-about whom she knows only his name. Abandoning college, she leaves California to journey to a deteriorating ethnic neighborhood in Indiana where she first encounters her grandfather, Walt, owner of a dying tavern, who's just been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. The two of them forge an immediate bond, but she does not disclose her identity to him, or to her father Leon, who is in denial about his own father's diagnosis. Walt's descent into Alzheimer's turns the lives of his family-his wife, Mary; sons Leon and Ricky; and Leon's wife, Stella-upside down. Only Willow, who continues to conceal her true identity, seems able to provide the balm for her grandfather's ailing soul and changing needs, including his ongoing plea to return to a home that no longer exists. But at what cost? Are we shackled by our past, or can it be redeeming?

THE LAST MOON BEFORE HOME is a tender, engrossing, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes humorous, story about looking for the home we all search for, in one way or another.