BOOK NOOK: Revisiting our very recent tragedies with humor, grace and good will

In 2015 Miller and his partner, the poet Anne Pierson Wiese, moved from New York City to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. They hoped to reconnect with their midwestern origins and devote more time to writing. Like most writers, Miller works at other jobs to subsidize his writing career.

He has labored at many tasks over the years-we find out about some of them in this latest memoir. In South Dakota Miller ended up obtaining work in the healthcare field. Those gigs didn’t pay well and could be nerve wracking. Miller was working in that industry when the pandemic began to unfold.

I would last about five seconds in the healthcare industry. Talking about medical procedures makes me nervous. Miller needed paychecks-he’s a braver man than I am. When the pandemic began to develop he was performing clerical duties for a hospital system.

Miller worked for a service that remotely connected small hospitals across the Midwest with medical practitioners all over the world. Through video link ups a patient in a small town in the Dakotas could be provided with medical care by a physician in, say, India.

This sounds futuristic, at least it did to me, but with the dwindling of other options in rural areas, the withering of care resources, that’s what has occurred. Miller managed remote links and worked with incredible nurses at his location who were providing care for their distant patients.

You might recall that initially places like New York City were epicenters of the virus. Miller tracks the pace of it and the mounting death toll. At first there were few cases in South Dakota and the governor there took a negligent approach to the mounting crisis. Soon, South Dakota would lead in cases.

A meat packing plant employed many immigrants. Waves of employees began falling ill. This company offered bonuses to keep working. Miller recounts how some plant managers wagered on how many of their workers would become sick. Such cruelty.

Miller observed people dying. He tracked their care and in some cases, final moments. We witness Miller’s terror about contracting the virus then infecting his partner. Unremitting stress triggers PTSD from childhood.

Miller scribbled literary snapshots of people, some saints, others, knaves. His accounts of compassion, chaos, paranoia, insensitivity, and grace echo gently, like distant birdsong.

Credit: Contributed

Credit: Contributed