Kristen Hartman is the third born of Maxine's only daughter Joanne and the middle of her five, favorite grandchildren. She has been the caretaker and chronicler of Maxine Dagen's stories for years-a joy and responsibility that was accelerated when the family realized their mother, grandmother and great-grandmother was failing.
Short pieces about her grandma have appeared on Kristen's blog, lookingthroughme.com, and thereby have endeared her beloved grandma even to people who never met her.
This is not only the story of a life well-lived, but of the granddaughter who finds her roots therein.
From the book:
"I didn't know how stunning it would be when the phone call came that we'd entered a new chapter of our lives-that Grandma might be writing the last pages of her story. I didn't know how many tears I would shed on the pages as we turned them together.
"So . . . this is a chronicle of the hardest goodbye I've ever said. Many days I left Grandma's side and sat in my car scribbling teary transcripts of our conversations or went home and pounded my grief into a keyboard because I knew I couldn't bear to forget any of it-but neither could I trust my memory to hold it-so I wrote and I wrote and I wrote.
"I didn't know how many chances I'd have to hold her hand and whisper, 'Grandma, tell me a story.'"