Author Description

This is the saga of Patricia deGroot Abercombie, a rich, and sickly dowager from the Upper East Side who decided on this particular Christmas Eve to go to live at a hospice facility on Long Island. She didn't want to die alone. But what would she do about the guilt from the family secret? Her luck of the draw was to get a cigar-smoking Ukrainian cabbie, Zhelyazko Kowalchuk. Ziggy arrived for his fare with a scruffy goatee, a thread bare Habersham Tweed, and his box of 8-Track tapes. He also carried his PTSD along with a visible war injury from Vietnam, and his cigars. But he knew who he was and he didn't take any guff from anyone, especially from a demanding rich, white, woman. Trish hired him for the day to visit her dearest memories around Manhattan before taking her to the hospice facility. Can I tell you they had contentious encounters? Can I tell you through it all they changed each other... even became friends, and more? May I also suggest that Trish heard from her deceased husband, Charles, and the love of her life Simon--whispers across time. And were those whispers real or extensions of her disease, her medicines? The life lessons Trish teaches are that death is just another locus on this line called Life. And that many things are worse than death. You will never forget her glorious resolve.