A Path Revealed: How Hope, Love, and Joy Found Us Deep in a Maze Called Alzheimer's

A Path Revealed is the story about a young family's sudden shift from a comfortable, middle-class American life into an alien world shaped and defined by Alzheimer's disease. Just days after turning 50, Martha Maddux was hit with this diagnosis. The news devastated her and husband Carlen. 

But this is not a story about hopelessness. Rather, this story traces a path that emerged during their family's darkest hours, a path they did not foresee. Encouraged by a friend and Presbyterian minister, just after the diagnosis, Martha and Carlen drove from their home in Florida to visit a Catholic nun in Kentucky. This path first appeared among the hills and back roads there.

"As we were drawn into this twisting journey," says Carlen, "I scrambled for answers. I devoured scores of books, began writing what evolved into a 14-volume journal, flew halfway around the world to Australia, spent scores of weekends at a nearby monastery, and found myself all alone one week in Thomas Merton's cabin."

A Path Revealed is not an Alzheimer's guidebook or a self-help book. Plenty of those exist, many with good practical advice. Only a few books, though, explore the painful spiritual and emotional issues that are sure to surface with a crisis like Alzheimer's.

Martha and Carlen were forced to face the fallout from their own crisis. You or a loved one may be staring at a different crisis--cancer, stroke, job loss, diabetes, heart attack, home foreclosure, you name it. Regardless of the crisis, the potential for emotional and psychological upheaval--alienation, depression, fear, guilt, anxiety attacks, a cold numbness--is much the same for victim and family alike, for care-receiver and caregiver.

"Alzheimer's happens to be the context of our story, not its focus," says Carlen. "Our story's focus is the spiritual path that emerged out of a threatening darkness."

First-time author and career journalist, Carlen Maddux describes in vivid imagery the journey he and wife Martha traveled the last 17 years of their life together. Martha was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1997, just days after turning 50. Carlen's first journalism job was with the nationally acclaimed St. Petersburg Times (now Tampa Bay Times). In 1984, he launched, edited, and published a regional business magazine for the rapidly growing Tampa Bay, FL, market--the Maddux Report. He closed it 26 years later in 2010.

In 1963, Carlen attended Georgia Tech on a full football scholarship. He earned an MBA degree in 1970 from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he played on UNC's rugby club. Martha graduated from Agnes Scott College in Atlanta in 1969. She also attended UNC, earning a Master of Arts in Teaching History in 1970. While in Atlanta, Martha dated Carlen's roommate at Tech, who subsequently married Martha's apartment mate at UNC. Weird, right?   

Martha and Carlen married in 1972, and set out to be wannabe hippies, spending their honeymoon wandering through Mexico before taking jobs in Santa Fe, NM, then moving to Lafayette, LA, where he taught a year in college, then back to Santa Fe to help a friend launch the alternative weekly Santa Fe Reporter, which, believe it or not, is still kicking.

In 1975, the wandering couple returned to Martha's hometown of St. Petersburg, FL, when she was pregnant with their firstborn. Their children are David, 41, Rachel, 39, and Kathryn, 35. Martha was a civic activist, successfully managing several local political campaigns before serving six years on the St. Petersburg City Council in the 1980s and chairing the county's Juvenile Welfare Board.

Carlen's blog can be found at carlenmaddux.com.