Crossing Over provides a unique view of patients, families, and their caregivers striving together to maintain comfort and hope in the face of incurable illness. The narratives weave together emotions, physical symptoms, spiritual concerns, and the stresses of family life, as well as the professional and personal challenges of providing hospice and palliative care. Based on a vast amount of participant-observation and in-depth interviews, Crossing Over moves far beyond dry technical manuals for symptom control, and tired clichés about death with dignity, to depict the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells of the daily in patients homes and the palliative care unit. It captures the breathtaking diversity of people's aspirations and ideals as they face death, and the views of the professionals who care for them. Anger and fear, tenderness and reconciliation, jealousy and love, social support and falling through the cracks, unexpected courage and unshakable faith-- all of these are part of facing death in late twentieth-century North America, and this book brings them to life in an extraordinary portrait of the processes of giving and receiving palliative care.

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Anna M. Towers' profile page

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David Barnard is at University of Pittsburgh. Anna Towers is at McGill University.

"Too many times clinicians and caregivers alike want to decide what is good and what is bad about a death experience. This text is an excellent reminder that when we die, we will be able to decide what is right for us. While others may make suggestions or offer information, they must allow the patient to decide how this event should procede.... Weighted Numerical Score: 100 - 5 Stars!" -- Doody's

"All the narratives are engrossing. They are also instructive, illustrating how the issues that arise in palliative care can be addressed through a team process."--JAMC, March 20, 2001

"This text is an excellent reminder that when we die, we will be able to decide what is right for us. For clinicians and lay people, and a must for the library of any clinician who deals with end-of-life issues."--ChoiceMiddletown, CT, May 2001

"The affective void of traditional medical writing gives way to the richly varied texture of lived existential experience. The narrator's voice is also clear. Qualitative research posits that the researcher is a dunamic, interactive element in the human equation."--Annals, March 2001

"...an insightful and challenging attempt to document the gap that exists between the theories of palliative care and the realitites of its day-to-day practice...this book is refreshing in its avoidance of false hope and tidy resolutions."--Journal of Palliative Care

"Crossing Over is written with the education and training of physicians, nurses, chaplains, therapists, and social workers in mind. The author-investigators have taken pains to capture and convey the perspectives of patients and their families. This is cinema-verité projected in written word: the experience of illness, dying and caregiving photographed with available light, through clinical lenses. Crossing Over reads as biography, ethnography, comparative socialogy, and medical anthropology. However, true to its intention, it remains a clinical report. The book ultimately succeeds in conveying the essence of palliative care." -- Ira Byock, Hastings Center Report, Nov-Dec 2000

"A welcome addition to the fast-growing literaturein this field of human need and response." --Dr. Derek Doyle

"The text would be an excellent addition to any collection on death and dying. In a non-judgemental manner the authors have examined the individualism of dying while maintaining the clinical aspects."--Bibliotheca Medica Canadian, 2000 Winter

"This work is a collection of narratives that each provide a glimpse into the later stages of a terminal illness. The narratives cover a wide range of concerns, touching on the emotions of both patients and caregivers, physicial symptoms, spiritual concerns, stress on family relationships, and the challenge of providing adequate hospice and palliative care. At the end of the book, the authors of each narrative provide commentary and raise questions for discussion. Additionally, the book is complete with an index of themes and an extensive list of further reading." -- Journal of Social Work Education, Winter 2001

"Crossing Over is an impressive collection of 20 'narratives' of people facing the end of their lives alongside their professional and informal careers. What makes this book quite outstanding is the wealth of clinical experience contained within its pages - covering the physical, psychosocial, and spiritual issues of dying. This book emphasizes all aspects of holistic care with equal importance in the day-to-day work of end-of-life care. Because the text is about the actuality of 'crossing over', it is not surprising that spirituality and religious ritual play an important part in the text. This book will be extremely helpful for all disciplines working within the field of special palliative care. The emotional energy that many of the narratives must have consumed just to work with, let alone write down, is enormous. The authors need to be congratulated for bringing together an extremely coherent masterpiece in an easy-to-read style." -- Progress in Palliative Care, Vol 8 Num 4