“The Year My Family Unravelled” is an apt title for this harrowing memoir by Cynthia Dearborn. Gripping right from the start, her masterful prose has readers immediately invested in the outcome.

Negotiating care for ageing parents with dementia is never less than challenging. In Dearborn’s case, it was compounded by the fact that she lives in Australia and her father and stepmother lived in Seattle. Added to this, her father suffered from OCD, diabetes and severe paranoia, his house was virtually unliveable, and he obstinately refused to admit either that he had dementia or needed to move. And then to top it off, her stepmother was diagnosed with terminal cancer and moved out to go live with her son, virtually abandoning him to his fate. Once Dearborn discovered her father was double dosing himself with insulin, thereby dicing with death, she had no choice but to become not just a carer but a vigilante.

That she stuck it out through the fear, trauma, guilt and tumult of this chaotic year is nothing short of incredulous. In numerous flashbacks to her childhood, which was a nightmare of abuse, neglect and hardship, she shows how she developed a level of emotional resilience strong enough to not just survive but go on to reinvent herself as a successful academic and writer and forge a healthy and loving relationship of her own.

Families, even the best of them, entwine us in sticky webs of love, hate, resentment, fear and longing. In Dearborn’s case, when she stepped in to steer her father through his crisis, it was not only the present conflicts but the traumatic past she had to grapple with. Perhaps, though, for her the most confronting was the recognition that the father she loved but still feared, now depended utterly on her for his survival.

This is memoir at its most raw and compelling, brilliantly narrated and so relevant to the many families struggling with the aged care crisis.

Thanks to NetGalley and Affirm Press for providing me with an advance review copy of this book.