The Swing: A Muse's Memoir about Keeping the Artist Alive

The Swing: A Muse's Memoir about Keeping the Artist Alive by Susan Dennis is a spellbinding memoir that explores the relationship between the author and a sick artist. Susan knows the stakes are high and the odds stacked against her when she falls for the gifted photographer, Charlie, a man whose health deteriorates rapidly. Charlie works feverishly on his art, producing countless stunning works while his body grows weaker and weaker. In this memoir, the author captures her experience with the love of her life with unwonted clarity, a romance that is vividly portrayed as a work of art in itself. Follow this fascinating journey filled with mystery, love, pain, and delight, as an inexplicable illness allows a wonderful couple to re-define love and perspective.

This is a memoir that reads like fiction —a tale with a compelling premise, an inner conflict that takes the author to unexpected places, and characters that are fully and stunningly drawn. The attention of the reader is immediately arrested by Susan’s desperation when Charlie is in a critical condition. Her extraordinary ability to put the intangible into words, capture details in the descriptions, and explore Charlie's inner world is one of the outstanding strengths of this memoir. Susan Dennis writes in prose that is dazzling and deftly recreates dialogues to highlight the drama while drawing readers’ attention to the heart-stirring moments of her incredible journey with Charlie. The narrative voice is irresistible and the author has this uncanny gift of pulling the reader in with the first-person-narrative voice. The Swing: A Muse's Memoir about Keeping the Artist Alive is a memoir of love, resilience, and the dedication of a woman as she watches her lover’s life ebb away while his art takes center stage —a work of sheer brilliance.