Remembrances at Twilight

Remembrances at Twilight tells the story of two close friends kept apart as lovers by their mismatched lives. Julia is a nursing student who loves Ed as a brother; Ed has fallen head-over-heels in love with her. Neither one has the courage to reveal their feelings. Because of his bouts of self-loathing from chronic depression, Ed needs a wife to prove he is worthy of being loved. His mournful dreams and personal journal are filled with hopes that Julia will someday be his wife.Adding to their ill-formed relationship, Ed and Julia have little in common. She is a plain-spoken, openly candid and outgoing farm girl whose goal in life is to raise her children in a loving home. In contrast, Ed's gifts of raw intelligence and an eidetic memory have already gained him national attention as an orthopedic surgeon. Further, Ed is a loner, a brooding introvert who reads dark books on philosophy. Ed's depression is worsened because he knows his love for Julia is one-way; Julia's guilt is doubled because he has hit on the truth. Her admiration for Ed's kindness and sincerity makes her wish she could somehow will herself to fall in love with him. Ed watches helplessly as his hold on Julia Julia slips away; she has fallen in love with another man. He cannot bring himself to confess his love for her and ask for her hand in marriage for fear his melancholy will ruin her life.The new lover in Julia's life forces events to unfold that cause Ed and Julia to squarely face their differences and make a life-altering decision. They must attempt to understand what it means to truly love another person and whether sacrifice is the true currency of that love. At 75, Ed's eidetic memory is erased backward in time because of Alzheimer's; he is left only with recollections of increasingly distant events. He fills their evenings with detailed remembrances of their early, halcyon days when Eddie was still his and everything about their lives was framed by hope. When Alzheimer's threatens to erase memories of Julia, life has no meaning. And after Julia pledges to care for him to bitter end of an undignified death, he realizes he cannot ever repay her for this final sacrifice.Returning to the honeymoon cabin they first used 47 years ago, Ed and Julia balance out each other's debts.