In the Form of Bread

In this collection of vignettes—heartbreaking and often humorous—Nealon explores caregiving as both sacred practice and human risk.

She looks back to her relationship with a father devastated by the early death of her brother; to tending men—some with AIDS, some drunk, some sober—living in Bowery flophouses; to confronting racism; to the quiet instruction of a dog who teaches attention by gazing back.

The essays ask what price we pay when we offer ourselves wholeheartedly to one another, and what it means to remain open to being more than human in a fractured world.