The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife, by Anna Johnston

 

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This book has an interesting beginning setup of circumstances, and then it develops that environment to illustrate some insightful life lessons. Some themes explored by the book—importance of familial bonds, ethics of deception, and finding meaning in later life. 

Fred Fife is an elderly widower who by way of a combination accident and comedy of errors is mistook to be another person who is a resident in a nursing home. It's a far fetched set of circumstances, but as presented in the book it comes across as a realistic possibility. In case you are wondering what happened to the person he is replacing at the nursing home, the answer is that he is diseased, his body floated down a river, and when the body was found the authorities identified him as Fred Fife (their appearances were almost identical). 

So we have this new person living in a nursing home under an assumed name. The staff notices that his health has suddenly improved, and he is a much more helpful person than he used to be. The story develops along several parallel paths and through the encounters with various characters deals with issues of grief, dementia, social isolation, cancer, and addiction. These issues are explored with a sensitive and insightful approach. Because of Fred's past experience with his mother's early onset dementia he is skilled at communicating with Alzheimer patients. 

Fred's comfortable life in the nursing home is upset when the estranged daughter of the man he replaced shows up. The daughter hasn't seen her father since age nine, she's now pregnant and alone, and so she decides to reestablish a relationships with her father. Their meeting leads to a close friendship, but one thing leads to another and Fred decides he must reveal his true identity for the welfare of this new surrogate daughter. 

The book ends with an exploration of the nature of a "true" father-daughter relationship. I'm a sucker for picture perfect father-daughter relationships, and I'm happy to have found this one as portrayed by this book.

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