Richland Library Main
Meet the Author: Judy Goldman
Monday, March 18, 2019 6:30 p.m. – 8 p.m.
A routine procedure left novelist, memoirist, and poet Judy Goldman's husband paralyzed. Together is her unforgettable account of the struggle to regain their "normal" life and a nuanced portrait of a marriage tested.
When Judy Goldman's husband reads a newspaper ad for an injection to alleviate back pain, the outpatient procedure sounds like the answer to his longtime backaches. But rather than restoring his tennis game, the procedure leaves him paralyzed from the waist down--a phenomenon none of the doctors the family consults can explain. Overnight, Goldman's world is turned upside down. Though she has always thought of herself as the polite, demure wife opposite her strong, brave husband, Goldman finds herself thrown into a new role as his advocate, navigating byzantine hospital policies, demanding and refusing treatments, seeking solutions to help him win back his independence.
Along the way, she flashes back to her memories of their life together. As she tries to envision her family's future, she discovers a new, more resilient version of herself. Together is a story of the life we imagine versus the life we lead--an elegant and empathetic meditation on partnership, aging, and, of course, love.
Join us earlier this same day for a free writing workshop led by Judy, for both beginning and advanced writers! Click here for more details.
JUDY GOLDMAN is the author of two award-winning poetry collections and two novels, Early Leaving and The Slow Way Back, which was a finalist for SIBA's Novel of the Year and winner of the Sir Walter Raleigh Fiction Award and the Mary Ruffin Poole Award for First Fiction. Her memoir, Losing My Sister, was a finalist for both SIBA's Memoir of the Year and ForeWord Review's Memoir of the Year, and her new memoir, Together: A Memoir of a Marriage and a Medical Mishap, will be published February 12, 2019, by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. Her work has appeared in Real Simple, The Washington Post, and in many literary journals. She teaches writing workshops throughout the Southeast, and serves on the permanent faculty of Table Rock Writers Workshop.