From the Lost and Found of Memories By Brenda Haas

“Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.” — Cicero

I’m an introvert (masquerading as an extrovert) with a ready supply of quiet, often sarcastic, one-liners. I’m good for a chuckle or two, on most days. 

Painfully awkward on others. 

Sorting through the “lost and found” of equally-awkward memories—growing up an only child raised by a single mother in small-town America—allowed me to better understand my past and provided initial inspiration for my award-winning debut novel, Finding Sutton’s Choice, a Lake Erie story about family secrets, fractured relationships and second chances.

A past feature writer and columnist for a Pittsburgh newspaper, I’d made a career of writing nonfiction. In 2018, I moved back to my home state of Ohio and settled in Lakeside—a closeknit Chautauqua community on Lake Erie. 

Lakeside offers shuffleboard, sailing, ice cream parlors, and quaint 1800s cottages with questionable plumbing. It also offers limited journalism opportunities. I used my gift of time to attempt National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), a once-popular online writing challenge in which participants write 50,000 words in a single month. I set my story in the very picturesque resort town where I live. 

As I fictionalized and loosely wove humorous and not so humorous personal stories into my first draft about Charlotte Sutton, a young writer who must return to her hometown when her estranged father is thought to have Alzheimer’s, I found myself seeking answers to better understand my own childhood.

I dove deeper into the lost and found.

The takeaway from my therapeutic journey was this: One’s past is only as accurate as one’s perception of that moment in time. 

Think back to any day in history. I’ll choose July 29, 1981. Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer’s wedding, held at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, was watched by an estimated 750 million people worldwide. 

I was 12, at the time, and sprawled on a bed in a wood-paneled hotel room with my mother in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. The motel didn’t have a pool (horrors). I’d breezed through the books I’d brought on vacation (double horrors). The wedding guests in the church stood. Organ music blared. I questioned what all the fuss was about. My mother shushed me. The future Princess of Wales walked down that very long aisle, and I still remember wondering how the bride would deal with that train and veil if she needed to go to the loo. 

I was bored. I wanted out of that room. I wanted to do something fun.

With maturity brings perspective. It was a pivotal moment in history, but I was too focused on myself to notice. Each witness to that moment would have a different perception of that day. If I were to ask my mother what she remembers of the royal pairing, no telling what she might say. 

Memories are ours and ours alone.

Ultimately, Alzheimer’s disease and the impact it has on memory became an important thread in Finding Sutton’s Choice. In 2026, May is designated Mental Health Awareness Month; June is Alzheimer’s & Brain Awareness Month. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, 55 million people are living with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, worldwide. About one in nine people, aged 65+, have Alzheimer’s disease. Early onset Alzheimer’s, affecting people under 65, is becoming more common. 

A few years prior to drafting my novel, a close friend—in his 50s and always the smartest man in the room—began losing his train of thought and forgot how to play favorite board games. He worked with numbers and retired prematurely. Doctors began treating him for early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Another friend’s mother was also diagnosed, and we watched the slow decline of a dear soul who’d been a pillar of strength and kindness, a talented musician and a teacher to countless students. 

I took the journalist’s route to understanding. I dove into researching the illness and read Still Alice, by Lisa Genova. It changed my world.

Though the early drafts of my small-town Lake Erie novel allowed me to express the often-immature angst I felt as a child, always chasing the dream of a closer relationship with a parent who lived many states away during my growing-up years, I also wanted to raise awareness for the horrific illness impacting so many.

I have no medical degree or work experience with the elderly, but I spent months talking with loved ones, gaining the caregiver’s perspective. Finding Sutton’s Choice became a home for many of those stories.

Finding Sutton’s Choice, a work of fiction, gave me a chance to better understand myself while sorting through that lost and found of distant memories. We can’t change our past, but finding the grace to forgive ourselves and others can soften those sharp edges. At its heart, my story is about second chances with the ones we love. If I’ve raised awareness for Alzheimer’s in the telling, all the better. 

Annually, I hold an End Alzheimer’s fundraiser and continue to support the Alzheimer’s Association in any way I can. For more information, visit www.alz.org.

KIRKUS recommended, Finding Sutton’s Choice was published in June 2025, via Ten16 Press. The novel received a Literary Titan Gold Book Award, two International Impact Book Awards (Aging and Women’s Fiction categories), and a PenCraft Best Book Award for Fiction. For details, visit www.brendahaas.com.

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Award-winning novelist and magazine feature writer Brenda Haas spent many years as a reporter and columnist for a Pittsburgh press. Her writing has appeared in Leisure Living Magazine, Penn-Franklin News, The Beacon, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and My Outer Banks Home magazine. Traditionally published through Ten16 Press (June 2025), Brenda’s debut novel—Finding Sutton’s Choice—is set in Lakeside, Ohio, on Lake Erie. It received a KIRKUS Reviews “Get It!” recommendation and won a Literary Titan Gold Book Award (2025), two International Impact Book Awards (Aging & Women’s Fiction, 2025), and a seasonal PenCraft Best Book Award for General Fiction (Winter, 2026).

FINDING SUTTON’S CHOICE

It’s been ten, long years since her abrupt departure, and, with a cryptic voicemail, 28-year-old writer Charlotte Sutton finds herself back in her hometown of Lakeside, Ohio. Only this time, her estranged father doesn’t recognize her, and a surprise half-sibling has taken her place.

Chuck Sutton-newspaper editor, retired baseball player, and the town’s most beloved celebrity-is thought to have Alzheimer’s disease. The community newspaper is also on the verge of closure, and a childhood friend holds a decade-long grudge. Despite all this, there is Lakeside. The quaint waterfront community, flush with ivy-covered cottages and vintage charm, hasn’t changed even as everything else in Charlotte’s life has shifted. She intends to stay only long enough to get her father’s affairs in order.

But, to reconcile her past and unearth family secrets, Charlotte must reconnect with Chuck through his Alzheimer’s diagnosis and reevaluate her own misconceptions about growing up in the small Ohio town that still holds her heart.

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing