Finding Hazel

FINDING HAZEL is a love story with a bitter-sweet ending. Chris is brought up in post-War Britain and grows to love travel. After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, he and some high school friends drive across Europe to Prague, and witness the effect that occupation by Soviet troops is having on the Czech people. They meet two young Czechs whom Chris visits again as he grows and travels more. In London, meanwhile, he meets a dazzling American woman, Hazel. They fall deeply in love. They agree to help the two Czechs, who are now married and have two young sons, to escape to the West via Jugoslavia. After a short stay in Traiskirchen, an Austrian refugee camp, and in the Austrian countryside, the Czech family is accepted by the USA to live and work there.

Soon afterwards, Chris and Hazel marry in London, and experience a diverse life working in London and the north-east of England. Later they move to New England in the USA and Chris becomes a US citizen.

After a close sister dies, Hazel suffers deep depression. Gradually it becomes clear that she is suffering from dementia. The memoir describes the challenges of caring at home for a partner with such an erratic and confusing disease. Many friends offer help. Even so, Hazel and Chris are each stretched to their limits as the dementia advances. Chris describes both the turns that Hazel's condition takes, and the various challenges faced by other family carers, whom he meets along the way.

Right at the end of Hazel's life, her mood and behavior soften, and she slips peacefully away. Chris copes with his solitude as best he can, and, after reviving memories of Hazel in her heyday, he returns to hiking in the Swiss Alps to think about his future. He settles in the town in the USA where his Czech friends are living, not one family now, but three.