Polar Vortex

What do you do when your mother can’t remember who you are? You catch the first flight from your adopted home of London to your original hometown of Cedar Rapids, lowa, where she’s hospitalized, injured, and struggling with the swirling disorientation of dementia. You take responsibility for finding her new (and, perhaps, final) home—although insurance is running out and you might have to finally patch up your bitter relationship with your sister. And you try not to think about death, lurking around every corner . . . or the coming polar vortex, growing closer and closer as snowflakes swirl ever faster outside.

With cinematic illustrations and moving yet humorous prose, award-winning author and cartoonist Denise Dorrance shares the two most haywire months of her life: the phone call after her mother is discovered lying confused on the living room floor, the mingled shock and familiarity of a harsh Midwestern midwinter, the attempt to settle her homesick mother into a care facility, the limiting and limitless inanities of the US health care system, and the impossible decisions about what comes next. Incorporating vintage postcards, photographs, and letters, Dorrance brilliantly captures the sadness, frustration, and gallows humor of suddenly having to care for an aging parent and facing the moment of transition between life as you’ve long known it and life as it must become.

Author Biography

American-born cartoonist and illustrator Denise Dorrance worked in magazines in New York for twelve years (including at Cosmopolitan under Helen Gurley Brown) before moving to London in 1993. Polar Vortex is her first graphic novel; in the UK, it was shortlisted for the 2020 Myriad First Graphic Novel competition and won the LDComics 2020 Rosalind B. Penfold Prize. Dorrance has illustrated numerous other books, including Manners: A Modern Field Guide, and her cartoons have run for decades in many publications, including the Mail on Sunday (UK).