"Living with a strong woman is a gift," writes David Kirkpatrick. "Losing one is an earthquake. And like most men, I was not very good at grief." Conceived as an appreciation of the key female figures in his life, both girls and women, and written in the aftermath of his wife Betsy's death in 1991 after a six-year battle with cancer, David Kirkpatrick's In Praise of Strong Women: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (Granville Island $24.95) is an autobiography, replete with family photos, that will chiefly interest the author's family members. But it culminates in three advisory chapters on marriage and grief: The Challenge of Loving a Strong Woman, Living with a Strong Woman and Growing Old with a Strong Woman. Kirkpatrick was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and grew up in Yellow Springs, Ohio. He has chiefly practiced as a psychotherapist and psychiatrist in Ashland, Oregon and Vancouver.

BOOKS

Neither Married Nor Single: When Your Partner has Alzheimer's or Other Dementia (Brush Educational, 2018) $16.95 978-1-550597-28-8

In Praise of Strong Women: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (Granville Island, 2009) $24.95 978-1-894694-70-4

[BCBW 2018]