The Pianist's Only Daughter: A Memoir - Paperback

by Kathryn Betts Adams (Author)

**Eric Hoffer Book Award 2025 Category Finalist**

The Pianist's Only Daughter: A Memoir is a frank, humorous and poignant exploration of aging in an aging expert's own family. Only daughter and geriatric social worker Kathryn Betts Adams brings to life her colorful, emotionally volatile parents, an English teacher/poet and a music professor/concert pianist, from their heady youth through their final years. As they reach old age and need her help, the author struggles with recurring family dynamics and disappointments, along with limitations to the American healthcare system for older adults.

Between her mother's decline with Parkinson's disease and her dramatic father's wish to be in charge, managing their care proves challenging despite the author's social work and aging expertise. In a clear, wry and authentic voice, the author shares intimate details of her parents' aging, the efforts she makes to help them maintain their unique identities and quality of life, and the mix of resentment, overwhelm and deep empathy she feels for them.

"This powerful account is both personal and deeply emotive, recounting Adams's experiences while also memorializing her parents." The BookLife Prize

"I think there is a great beauty in this story that shares the honest happenings of life as it happened to the author and her family. In describing the difficulties of separations, health problems, her parents' relationship as it progressed, the author has created a beautiful and poignant work of love, and what living with other people in heart and action really looks like. Readers of memoir, and personal narratives will adore it."
Judge, 32nd Annual Writer's Digest Self-Published Book Awards

**A Winner of the 2024 PenCraft Seasonal Book Award Spring Competition in the non-fiction, memoir genre.**

"It's both a beautiful narrative history of your/our parents' era and creative life, as well as the bittersweet, difficult decline of our loved ones and the challenges of caregiving all at once. Brava!" Ginger McKnight-Chavers, Author of In the Heart of Texas: A Novel