ADAM’S CHAIR takes place in the working class suburbs of Boston in the 1980s. Like every working class neighborhood, there are the older groups, mostly Irish and French Canadians, who are growing older and, for the most part, are in the care of the new immigrant groups, mostly Mexican and Central American “illegals”. The backdrop for the plot revolves through the Sunshine Club, a senior care center and various churches hosting AA meetings. The action does not involve a struggle against economic disparity or political disenfranchisement, though these elements do appear at the periphery of the story.
ADAM’S CHAIR is the story of working class people striving for a bit of the American dream while keeping their dignity. Although sometimes difficult to follow the meandering thoughts of some of the patients, the well-conceived plot is able to hold a reader’s attention.
At the Sunshine Club, the reader is introduced to the main characters in the book: Priscilla, the center’s director, Alcide, whose borderline dementia masks the love he has for his wife, Eulalie and Henrietta Rose, a recovering alcoholic trying to keep her family together. The strongest character in this story is Rosa, a nurse’s aide who escaped from a bad marriage in Mexico to a life as a quasi-legal common law wife of a man who will not marry her. Throughout this story, the characters interact with each other offering help to get past one more day in the dreary sections of Waltham and Watertown where they live. While the struggle for a better life unfolds, news stories about the space shuttle Columbia’s progress in its orbit around the earth are introduced, as if this technical marvel of American achievement passes over the earth-tethered population of the Sunshine Club like an unreachable deity that does not seem to care. Despite the rough edges of the town and the occasional conflict between characters, these are people who care about each other in their own dysfunctional way. Rosa’s love for Wolfie, a silent patient at the club, is strong enough to have her break the strike line and search for him until she finds him in a nursing home.
ADAM’S CHAIR is a close look at the working class, especially those whose work is among the infirm members of their community. As the aged learn to cope with their lessened circumstance, there is always someone able to help them discover that joy did not leave their lives.
Reviewed by Ed Bennett for IndieReader