No Way Out of This is not the kind of Alzheimer’s memoir where you read about a noble, self-sacrificing wife who gives up everything to take care of her husband. We see such spouses in books and movies—but they’re not telling the whole story. Nobody’s that good. Certainly Sue Lick isn’t.

Sue’s much-older husband, Fred, is a forgetful man. She’s always found that charming. But when his absentmindedness worsens into full-blown dementia, she suddenly finds herself dealing with his illness alone. Struggling to care for Fred and manage their two loveable but incorrigible dogs and still find time to write and play music, Sue constantly faces impossible choices. Tell people about his illness? Let him drive? Put him in an institution? Treat his medical problems, or let him go? Every decision feels wrong—but in the end, their love carries them through it all.

More than 6 million Americans suffer from dementia. One in three seniors have it. Add in the spouses, siblings, adult children, and professionals responsible for their care, and we all have a stake in this story. While some caregivers have loving families to support them and enough money to pay for the best care, more often the situation is a lot messier. Here the author, a longtime journalist, tells the truth about nursing homes, Medicaid, mental health, and more.

Sue Fagalde Lick, a former San Francisco Bay Area newspaper reporter and editor, is the author of the poetry chapbooks Gravel Road Ahead and The Widow at the Piano: Poems by a Distracted Catholic, the nonfiction books Stories Grandma Never Told: Portuguese Women in California, Childless by Marriage, and Love or Children: When You Can’t Have Both; and the novels Up Beaver Creek and Seal Rock Sound. When not writing, she sings and plays piano, guitar, and mandolin at St. Anthony’s Catholic Church and wherever people will listen. She lives in a coastal forest just south of Newport, Oregon.