Next Best Thing: A Memoir of What Remains When Family Fails cover art

Next Best Thing: A Memoir of What Remains When Family Fails

 Preview

Listen with Audible free trial

Free with 30-day trial
Prime logo New to Audible Prime Member exclusive:
2 credits with free trial
1 credit a month to use on any title to download and keep
Listen to anything from the Plus Catalogue—thousands of Audible Originals, podcasts and audiobooks
Download titles to your library and listen offline
₹199.00 per month after 30-day trial. Cancel anytime.

Next Best Thing: A Memoir of What Remains When Family Fails

Written by: Sarah Spector
Narrated by: Sarah Spector
Free with 30-day trial

₹199.00 per month after 30-day trial. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for ₹770.00

Buy Now for ₹770.00

Four words changed Sarah Spector's life. "I will get him."She typed them into her phone in September 2018, while her cousin Abby lay dying in a Los Angeles hospital and someone had to decide what happened to Abby's step-father. His name was Peter. Everyone called him Schatzi, German for treasure, the name his late wife gave him. He had Parkinson's, a heavy accent, a habit of mumbling, and no one left.Sarah was not his daughter. She was not his next of kin. She was a CPA with a full life and a family she had spent more than a decade keeping at a distance. She was, as he put it, the next best thing.What followed was four years inside a system that was not built for a man like Schatzi. Nursing homes that lost track of him. A conservatorship that moved at its own pace while he did not. Gambling, elder abuse reports, a pandemic that locked every door, and a man who kept calling the police on the people trying to help him.Told with text messages, emails, and legal documents exactly as they were written, Next Best Thing is a record of what eldercare actually looks like from the inside. It is also a book about what family means when the people who are supposed to show up do not, and about the friends and strangers who did.It is unsparing about the institutions, and pretty much everything else. It is far funnier than it has any right to be - that's Schatzi.For anyone who has become the person who handles it.©2026 Sarah Spector (P)2026 Sarah Spector
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
No reviews yet