Who Cares?

★★★★★ “Makes the case with passion, spirit and humor, for the full personhood of the elderly and disabled.” Sara Bolder, Co-Producer of the Oscar-nominated documentary Crip Camp

Who Cares? is the story of a spirited place where old people go to die. Set in Michigan in 1960, the Woodruff Home for the Aged is a public facility for the indigent elderly. When a sinking economy prompts city officials to consider a private developer’s proposal to convert the home into a pricey retirement residence, panic sets in. The residents fear displacement; the staff fear unemployment.

As the clock ticks, the novel follows the city’s contentious deliberations, the outlandish efforts to derail the sale, and the complex web of intimacy and intrigue among its characters: Miss Mamie Martine, a feisty octogenarian with an encyclopedic knowledge of film, and her rival, Mr. J. T. Hillenbrand, a once-wealthy nonagenarian ruined by the Depression; Jilly Duprey, Hillenbrand’s biracial great-granddaughter locked in a power struggle with city manager Hugh Pepper; Laurel Robbins, the home’s idealistic director, and Rupert Boyle, the well-meaning custodian who resists her reforms; and Mamie’s nephew Simon Walpole, an amateur sleuth digging up dirt on Franklin Savoy, the home’s shady would-be buyer.

Is the title a cynical shrug—or a plea for dignity? As brisk and surprising as a spry senior citizen, Who Cares? will make you laugh, cry, and think twice about the value of a life well lived.