Author(s): Stefan Merrill Block

Fiction

Spanning continents and generations, The Story of Forgetting is the tale of how history can become destiny; how the imagination can transform reality; and how loss, however devastating, can ultimately forge profound meaning. It is the story of the complexity, the pain, and the bliss of forgetting.

At seventy, Abel Haggard is a hermit, resigned to memories of the family he has lost, living in isolation on his family's farm amid the encroaching suburban sprawl of Dallas. Hundreds of miles to the south in suburban Austin, fifteen year old Seth Waller is devastated when his mother's increasingly eccentric behaviour is diagnosed as a rare, early-onset form of Alzheimer's. He begins an 'empirical investigation' to uncover the truth about her genetic history in order to understand the roots of this terrible disease. Though neither one knows of the other's existence, Seth and Abel share a unique tradition: as children, both were told stories of Isadora, a fantastical land free from the sorrows of memory. First published 2008.