Finding Frances

Frances Baldwin is sick and ready to die, but she'd always imagined it being a dignified death with proper notice. She'd arrange herself artfully on the pillows, smooth the bedclothes, and have her eyebrows penciled in just right. They'd find her in the morning and comment on how peaceful she looked. She never expected the distracting complications arising from her decision to stop medical interventions and further treatment for her debilitating illness. Yet, she doesn't give up hope for that graceful exit.

She turns to her eldest son William to help her have a good death. What does that even mean? And can he, a philosophical med-school dropout, honor her wishes without tearing himself and the family apart? Not if his father and sister have their way. Not if his younger brother makes trouble. Not if the doctors intervene. Not if Frances herself keeps changing her mind.

Caught in the middle of the kind of medical drama he tried purposefully to avoid, William negotiates his way through tricky family relationships, childhood memories and, most difficult of all, his own fears about truly devoting himself to his own life.

Frances Baldwin teaches them all that there's more to life than living, and more to death than dying.

"It is a real joy to read this novel. The journey on this planet has a beginning and an end... We have to ease the burdens of the final goodbye and relearn the naturalness of dying..."
Lofty Basta, MD
Author of Graceful Exit and Life and Death on Your Own Terms

Janice M. Van Dyck was born in Philadelphia and is a former corporate officer, organizational development consultant and communications specialist. She lives on the west coast of Florida. Her first novel was The O'Malley Trilogy, and she is at work on her next book.