Reis's Pieces: Love, Loss, and Schizophrenia

by Karen Winters Schwartz

Overview

Professor Reis Welling's life is idyllic. A respected professor of botany at Cornell, he's been granted early tenure, has received a grant to carry out field research in the Adirondack Forest, and has met Ellen, the love of his life. Everything is perfect—that is until the forest turns its back on him, department heads start spying on him, Ellen starts lying to him, and all start transmitting thoughts into his head. Herein lies Reis's slow and insidious descent into a vicious and damaging world of mental illness.

Masterfully shifting between past and present, Reis's Pieces intimately examines what transpires when all someone has ever known or believed to be true helplessly deteriorates right in front of him. How does one who has lost everything ultimately learn to accept and live life again after a diagnosis of schizophrenia? Can Reis, with the stress of this acceptance and the possibility of a new love—Kelly Adams, who, despite being committed to her seemingly perfect boyfriend, Brian, can't seem to get Reis out of her head—remain healthy?

Reis's Pieces uncompromisingly explores one man's struggle for his place in an altered world and two women's search for their place in his. Welcome to the life of Reis Welling and all his pieces, an engrossing and provocative world of love, loss, and schizophrenia.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940014570183
Publisher:	Goodman Beck Publishing
Publication date:	04/27/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	294
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Karen Winters Schwartz was born and raised in Mansfield, Ohio. She wrote her first truly good story at age seven. Her second-grade teacher, Mrs. Schneider, publicly and falsely accused her of plagiarism. She did not write again for forty years.

In-between, she moved to Columbus, Ohio, where she spent thirteen years of her life pursuing a seemingly endless education at The Ohio State University. She received her undergraduate degree in microbiology, her master of science in immunology, and a doctorate in optometry. Winters Schwartz met her future husband, Paul, at a student optometric conference in Chicago. They were both slightly drunk, and it was love at first sight. They married in 1987, moved to Central New York, and bought a house on the shores of Otisco Lake—the "pinky finger" of the Finger Lakes. There they began their lives together, their careers as optometrists, and raised two daughters, who are now off to change the world—hopefully in a good way.

Winters Schwartz is an active board member of NAMI Syracuse (National Alliance on Mental Illness), a sought-after speaker, and a strong advocate for mental illness awareness. This is her second novel and follow-up to her widely successful debut, Where Are the Cocoa Puffs?.