October 21, 2015, marks the date for the book release of my dear friend, Jan Groft’s book, Artichokes and City Chicken, Reflections on Faith, Grief, and My Mother’s Italian Cooking (available on Amazon). This is Groft’s third book examining the topics of death and dying, a triptych that Groft perhaps didn’t even realize she was writing until she was finished. Her first book, Riding the Dog: My Father’s Journey Home — A Memoir, and As We Grieve, reviewed below, preceded Artichokes. Taken alone, or as a collective, Groft’s body of work is an important contribution to the often taboo discussion topic of death and dying.
Please stop back this week for a review of Artichokes and City Chicken and an interview with author Jan Groft.
Our society is obsessed with the search for youth, and so unhinged by the notion of death that we take Herculean steps to keep people alive, sometimes using methods that defy logic. Not so many generations ago, people died at home, surrounded by their loved ones who nursed and fed and cared for them during their last days. Today people die in the hospital, surrounded by the whirl and hum of high tech gadgetry and if they’re lucky, the occasional relative. Death is no longer the spiritual experience it once was.
Green Life Blue Water 