Becky's Great Book Reviews The Present is Past by Josh Rank

Mary Weber is a beloved high school teacher in Appleton, Wisconsin, respected by students for her no-nonsense approach to managing her classroom. One day while escorting a troublemaker out to the hall for a talking-to, things get dim and confusing for Mary. The student sneaks away to the parking lot where he proceeds to get into a car accident; Mary loses her job of thirty-six years. She also learns she has early-onset dementia.

Mary's husband Greg tries to keep it together while watching his wife slowly disappear. Paying the bills on one salary proves challenging and while he's at work, Mary is often worryingly alone. Their daughter Ashley lives nearby, but with two small kids, a full-time teaching job, and an absent husband (they're separated), there's only so much she can do. Ashley also has mounting resentment toward her brother Sam who works as a nurse in Atlanta and never seems to want to hear any updates about his mother.

When Mary loses their dog one day, Greg loses his patience with her right before he goes out looking for their pet. Greg has a heart attack while driving and hits a pole. His resulting hospital stay and his refusal to get the surgery he needs lead to the loss of his job at the paper mill; this is the impetus to finally get Sam to come home.

Mary's lucidity comes and goes. At one point after Mary walks into her old school thinking that she needs to be at work, she has the thought that she doesn't know what's worse - how difficult everything has become or how embarrassing it was to continually make the same mistakes. But as Greg says to Sam at one point about taking care of his wife, "This is my job. For better or for worse, right?" The knowledge that they are all losing Mary bit by bit leads Sam to start a GoFundMe that blossoms into something wholly unexpected.

Alternating points of view seamlessly take us through the family's strain, and Josh Rank beautifully writes of the characters' struggles. When Greg felt briefly confused waking up in the hospital after his heart attack, he guiltily tells himself, "Your wife has this feeling every day". The family's frustration with their situation is palpable.

Rank paints a dream-like, surreal portrait of this time in the Weber's lives, giving the novel a mystical atmosphere with its imagery. When the family takes Mary on a long-awaited driving trip to finally see the Grand Canyon, Mary finds a way to deal with the pain of losing herself on her own terms.

The story concludes with a certain peace as the family says goodbye to her, and Greg and Mary's love and devotion for each other is nothing short of heart-wrenching. I give Josh Rank's The Present is Past five stars out of five.