Reis's Pieces: Love, Loss, and Schizophrenia - Softcover

Winters Schwartz, Karen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1936636085 ISBN 13: 9781936636082

Publisher: Goodman Beck Publishing, 2012

Synopsis

Professor Reis Welling's life is idyllic. A respected professor of botany at Cornell, he's been granted early tenure, has received a grant to carry out field research in the Adirondack Forest, and has met Ellen, the love of his life. Everything is perfect―that is until the forest turns its back on him, department heads start spying on him, Ellen starts lying to him, and all start transmitting thoughts into his head. Herein lies Reis's slow and insidious descent into a vicious and damaging world of mental illness. Reis's Pieces uncompromisingly explores one man's struggle for his place in an altered world and two women's search for their place in his. Welcome to the life of Reis Welling and all his pieces, an engrossing and provocative world of love, loss, and schizophrenia.

About this title

About the Author

Karen Winters Schwartz was born and raised in Mansfield, Ohio. She wrote her first truly good story at age seven. Her second-grade teacher, Mrs. Schneider, publicly and falsely accused her of plagiarism. She did not write again for forty years.

Educated at The Ohio State University, both Karen and her husband have shared a career in optometry in Central New York's Finger Lakes region, while raising two daughters.

Karen is the president of NAMI Syracuse (National Alliance on Mental Illness), a strong advocate for mental illness awareness, and a sought-after speaker at health association events and conferences across the country. Karen knows firsthand the devastation that mental illness can wreak on a family. She has talked to hundreds of families who have dealt with the frustration of a broken mental health care system. She has experienced the price of stigma and has felt the isolation that ignorance, misunderstanding, and judgment can inflict on everyone involved. She has also experienced the joy of the recovery of a loved one, stressing early detection and treatment as the key to this success.

Her widely praised novels on mental illness (Goodman Beck Publishing) include Where Are the Cocoa Puffs?: A Family's Journey Through Bipolar Disorder, 2010; Reis's Pieces: Love, Loss, and Schizophrenia, 2012; and The Chocolate Debacle, 2014.

Through her books, Karen opens up discussions about the impact of the negative stigma associated with these neurobiological brain disorders. Her books are not only honest and engaging stories, but are advocacy tools, educational tools, and a comfort to those dealing directly and indirectly with mental illness. Through literature, she educates while entertaining, elicits empathy while telling a great story, and advocates by reaching those who just don't "get it."

Review

"A gift." --Xavier Amador, PhD, bestselling author of I Am Not Sick, I Don t Need Help!

"A literary present." --Joseph J. Luciani, PhD, bestselling author of Self-Coaching: The Powerful Program to Beat Anxiety & Depression

"Honest and highly entertaining." -Alan Gettis, PhD, bestselling author of It's All Part of the Dance: Finding Happiness in an Upside Down World "Beautifully and compellingly written." -Bill Cross, PhD, LMFT, psychotherapist and professor emeritus of psychology "Sure to be an enduring benchmark novel on mental illness." --Allen Klein, bestselling author of Learning to Laugh When You Feel Like Crying: Embracing Life After Loss

About this edition

• Publisher: Goodman Beck Publishing
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1936636085
• ISBN 13: 9781936636082
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 290