Man in the Mirror: A man finding himself as he loses himself to Alzheimer's

Book excerpt: What goes on in the mind of a person as they succumb to Alzheimer’s disease? Zoe Murdock does a masterful job of portraying that in her new novel, Man in the Mirror. But it's so much more than a novel about a man succumbing to Alzheimer’s; it’s the story of a man’s life. Aaron Young seems to be a simple man, but the more the disease takes away his short-term memory, and the more he wants to hold on to his long-term memories. He wants to relive his life. He wants to find meaning in it. He wants to understand what went wrong with his marriage and with the relationship with his son. He wants to recapture the significance he found during his service in the Air Force during World War II when he flew dangerous missions “over the hump” from India to China. He goes on the road and picks up hitchhikers, and he learns from them, even as they are learning from him.