Book Review: At 12th & Marquette: A Story of Love, Faith, and Caregiving
At 12th & Marquette: A Story of Love, Faith, and Caregiving. Marie Malicki, Windy City Publishers, November 24, 2021, Paperback, 249 pages.
Reviewed by Evelyn Ann Casey.
From the first lines of Marie Malicki’s memoir, At 12th & Marquette, the reader knows this author will not pull any punches, hide from the pain, or romanticize a long marriage. The book can be summed up in its subtitle, A Story of Love, Faith, and Caregiving, but the simple story becomes a true pilgrimage in Malicki’s hands.
I expected the story to begin closer to her husband Jim’s illness, and it could have, but then I might not have learned that it takes a lifetime to prepare for the intense caregiving required by a diagnosis of amyloidosis, a rare disease that quickly saps energy and erodes every organ.
Malicki begins her pilgrimage in South Milwaukee, a Norman Rockwell version of postwar America when she was born in 1948. The thriving industrial city on Lake Michigan grounded her in the optimism of a middle-class family and the cultural values of her Catholic upbringing. Malicki’s teenage years in the turbulent 1960s focused more on getting a part-time job and dancing “The Mashed Potato” than social revolution. Her descriptions of music, hairstyles, and boys made me feel like sweet sixteen all over again.
Documentaries will tell you that political unrest remade the world in the 1960s and 1970s, but Malicki credits the Divine with remaking her personal world in 1967 when she meets Jim, the Chevelle guy. They date, marry, and start a family. Though some readers might wish her universe included a wider perspective on events of the time, Malicki’s purpose in sharing her life illuminates the repercussions and ripples that flow from the most ordinary of life events.
The young couple’s challenges begin early with prolonged postpartum depression. At another point, they nearly flame out. Malicki protects her and her husband’s privacy about the particulars of their fall from grace. However, she doesn’t hold back on the toxic patterns of behavior. Forgiveness is not easy. Malicki shows us what rock-hard love looks like. She takes no victory lap but rather lets the reader walk with her family.
When Jim, a longtime GM employee, is invited to become part of the team opening the new Saturn plant in Tennessee, a new life begins for the couple—and a new challenge when Jim is diagnosed with amyloidosis only months after retirement.
Anyone who has cared for a loved one will relate to the denial, exhaustion, hope, and anguish as Jim and Marie Malicki put aside plans for a trip to Italy for a trip to the doctor—lots of doctors and endless trips to the hospital. Doctors and medical staff are not portrayed as all-knowing gods—and the all-knowing God is often silent. Repeating gritty details of her husband’s daily physical deterioration risks the reader’s tolerance for graphic distress, but it reveals her truth: she was overwhelmed beyond human capacity yet gave what love required.
Without any maudlin trappings, Malicki shares a record of deepening faith and a love that grew even in the shadow of death. Readers will be moved to appreciate every precious moment on their own life’s pilgrimage.