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ABOUT THE BOOK

“We have waited a long time for a writer to bring light and a literary sensibility to the experience of loving and living through dementia. In the Evening, We’ll Dance: A Memoir in Essays on Love & Dementia is honest, important, gorgeously written, and a pleasure to read. Anne-Marie Erickson, ever curious about her husband’s changing consciousness, learns with her journalist husband a new lexicon with which to share his shifting reality. To this, Erickson adds a framework of myth, fairytale, photography, and art to give us an entirely original view of lifelong love. It widens the paradigm. It enlivens the spirit.”
— Patricia Weaver Francisco,
author of Telling: A Memoir of Rape and Recovery


“Startlingly good, this memoir is powered by grief, memory, and married love distilled to its essence, which is wordlessness. Poetic, literary, yet always accessible, it is certain to find a wide audience and win many awards.”
— Will Weaver,
author of Power & Light and Sweet Land


In the Evening, We’ll Dance is a deeply enriching read. These lyrical essays flow seamlessly into a whole, providing a prism-like reflection on what it means to love, to truly and deeply love, through the journey of dementia. These stories are continually drawn to the light, often through hard-earned dark passages. There is a page-turning suspense here, as this mythic and even mystical journey unfolds, as Erickson weaves her own and her husband’s insights with gleaned wisdom from fairy tales, literature, medical experts, philosophers, spiritual traditions, poetry and song. Readers will be invited to deepen their own currents of meaningful love, whether living with dementia or any other of life’s mysteries.”
— Patricia Hoolihan,
author of Hands and Heart Together: Daily Meditations for Caregivers

Anne-Marie Erickson embracing her husband

© 2025 Anne-Marie Erickson

Minnesota State Arts Board logo
National Endowment for the Arts logo

Anne-Marie Erickson is a fiscal year 2025 recipient of a Creative Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature; and by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

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Arrowhead Regional Arts Council logo

This project was supported by an Individual Artist Project Grant, made possible in part by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund. 

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