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Carrying the Burden of Longevity

I met Meryl Comer once, briefly, at a conference, and recall the juxtaposition of her sleek beauty and harrowing personal story: her husband, once chief of hematology and oncology at the National Institutes of Health, debilitated by early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, and her mother with the late-onset variety, both living in her suburban Maryland home, under her care.

Now Ms. Comer has filled in the blanks in that bare-bones version of her day-to-day life in this riveting and necessary, if flawed, book, “Slow Dancing With a Stranger,” in which Ms. Comer takes you down the black hole where she has lived for 20 years, with no end in sight.

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