Family Meals

Bringing Her Home

An uplifting true story of a family coming together to care for an aging parent with dementia, from the author of Living in a Foreign Language.

Former L.A. Law actors Michael Tucker and his wife, Jill Eikenberry, are enjoying the early years of retirement in their beautiful three hundred-fifty-year-old stone farmhouse in the central Italian province of Umbria. But when Jill’s elderly mother is suddenly widowed, the couple must leave the respite of the Italian countryside and travel westward to console Lora and help her plan her future.

Thus begins Family Meals, a beautifully told memoir that explores the meaning of family and examines the sacrifices we make for those we love. After Lora begins a rapid decline into dementia, and Jill decides to move her from California to New York City, the Tuckers initially attempt to place Lora in a senior residence. But when an apartment becomes vacant right across the hall from them, they grab it for Lora. Soon, Michael and Jill’s children, much to their parents’ happiness, decide not only to relocate to Manhattan but also move in together. Their family, which had been a loose network of individual strands, geographically scattered, has become, remarkably, a unit—and through life has upended their plans, Michael and Jill find themselves living a different, but truly rewarding, dream.