Open Every Window is a genre-bending prose account of the unravelling of a life — two lives — when Jane Munro's husband, Bob, is diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Evoking Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, this memoir charts a path through sorrow — the pain of seeing a partner age and approach death, the exhaustion of caretaking, and the regret in seeing life's scope narrow and diminish.

Writing with courage and love, Munro grapples with what it means to care for a husband who is gradually but devastatingly deteriorating while her own identity is eclipsed by a single word — caregiver. Even a doctor admonishes, "What job could be more important than caring for your husband?"

In this portrait of the myriad lives contained in a single life, Munro ultimately finds respite in the power of writing, Iyengar yoga and in the rhythms of the moon — not to heal but to face grief without breaking.

A poignant evocation for anyone who has experienced loss, Open Every Window reveals the pain and power inherent in loving and being loved. Framed with short observations of the moon — from a New Moon in Pune, India to the following New Moon in Vancouver, Canada — this memoir will entrance with its lyricism and comfort with the writer's hard-won warmth and wisdom. (From Douglas & McIntyre)

Open Every Window is available in September 2021.

Jane Munro is a writer form Vancouver. Her poetry books include Active Pass, Point No Point, and Grief Notes & Animal Dreams. Her poetry collection Blue Sonoma won the 2015 Griffin Poetry Prize.