It is one thing to believe that you are devoted to your spouse. It is another to live that devotion for months and years, as he becomes inexorably incapacitated until the day he dies. Such an effort is a fight against frustration, an exercise of inner strength — and a labor of love.

In “No Saints Around Here: A Caregiver’s Days,” Susan Allen Toth chronicles with unstinting honesty her own experience of caring for her husband, James, as Parkinson’s disease with dementia robs him of control over his body and, ultimately, his mind. The title alludes to the mixed feelings that caregivers experience in the emotionally and physically daunting and exhausting effort.

Read the full article.