Press Kit
Dr. Colbert's latest novel explores the spiritual, ethical and practical aspects of living with someone who chooses to hasten the end of their life when they have a terminal illness. Told from the perspective of everyone but the dying man, this story follows a family and particularly a wife who travels her own journey to finally accept her husband's decision.
The new literary fiction is titled Dying in the Red Chair and it tells the story of a couple who have spent the majority of their adult lives together, from college to medical practices in a small town in Eastern Kentucky. The wife, Etta, has a complicated mind filled with music, waning religious conviction and work stress while Arnie, her ER doctor husband relies on nature and reading Taber's Medical Dictionary for relaxation. Their daughter, Darby, follows in her father's footsteps into the woods.
Their lives are jolted when Arnie is diagnosed with a serious illness and makes an unwelcome decision about his life. The book is told from the perspectives of Etta, Darby and a friend named Ava (readers with the series will recognize Ava) and Arnie's thoughts are only known from the journal he writes about words he finds in Taber's. The book should appeal to those who enjoy thinking about the moral, spiritual, ethical and practical aspects of illness, debility, loss and dying. Surprisingly, the tale is not morbid and one reader observed she wasn't as sad as she expected at the ending.
