My new guest post is up at the September LSU Press blog.

It recounts what prompted me to combine two storylines in Melted Away, one centering on melting glaciers in the Andes and the other about caring for my father with dementia in Lima.

Here’s the opening:

Readers often ask me questions about Andean culture and disappearing glaciers at author events for my new book, Melted Away: A Memoir of Climate Change and Caregiving in Peru.

But one of my favorite, though less commonly asked, questions is: “How did you decide to weave together two storylines—one about reporting on climate change, the other about caring for a parent with Alzheimer’s disease—into a single book?”

The answer? The destructive processes of climate change and dementia, and the unique griefs they provoke, have much in common. And these emotions are increasingly becoming hallmarks of the human experience in the twenty-first century.

For seven years (2007–2014), I lived and worked in Peru, where I investigated the melting of tropical glaciers in the high Andes with photographer Jorge Vera. A longtime Floridian, I had no direct experience of glaciers until I saw one up close in June 2006, on an 18,000-foot-high peak in southern Peru that the Andean people have venerated since pre-Columbian times.

Read the full essay here.

And if you haven’t read Melted Away, please pick up a copy!