A Life Stolen is the gripping account of a father and daughter’s devastating, but inspiring journey through Alzheimer’s. It’s an inside look into the day-to-day challenges facing not only the patient, but also the caregivers. For many years, her father exhibited signs of dementia, eventually becoming too significant to ignore. Everything culminated during an incident one night, after which her father was taken away, never to return to his home again. The disease changed him every day until he was a stranger. Then, it stole his life.

Through the initial days at home to hospital stays, living in a memory care unit, rehab stints and eventually hospice care, this book reveals many of the struggles encountered while facing Alzheimer’s in a world not quite ready for it. It is based on actual events depicted exactly as they happened while travelling the heartbreaking and harrowing road through this horrific illness. Its purpose is to give guidance and insight to others caring for loved ones with this terrible affliction, whether it is in providing helpful information, feelings of support or simply words of encouragement. Most importantly, the hope is that it will make the road for others an easier one to travel. May the many tears in this journey be the fortitude that helps others deal with the adversity from this overwhelming disease.

USA Today Bestseller

“In The Taste of Air, Cleare deftly explores the consequence of our choices, even those made with the best of intentions. A family saga bridging decades and filled with shocking revelations, hope and love, you won’t be able put this book down.” ~Kate Moretti, author of NYT Bestseller “Thought I Knew You”

“In this terrific novel, when two women learn their mother wasn’t who they thought she was it leads them to question their own lives and choices. Deftly written, with lush descriptions of the New England setting, this is a book to choose as a companion for curling up on a sofa on a dark winter day or for laying on the beach in the summer. The Taste of Air is character-driven fiction at its best.”
~Ann Warner, author of The Babbling Brook Naked Poker Club series

A simple phone call disrupts Nell Williams’s well-ordered life. Her mother, Mary, is in a hospital in Vermont. But her mother is supposed to be safely tucked away in an assisted-living facility in Massachusetts, so Nell can’t fathom why she would be so far from home.

After notifying her sister, Bridget, Nell hops on a plane and rushes to her mother’s side. There, she discovers that her mother has been living a second life. Mary has another home and a set of complex relationships with people her daughters have never met.

When Nell and Bridget delve deeper into their mother’s lakeside hideaway, they uncover a vault of family secrets and the gateway to change for all three women.