On December 21, 2020, I wrote a Storied Charlotte blog post about Rebecca McClanahan’s then recently published memoir titled In the Key of New York City: A Memoir in Essays. As I noted in my blog post at the time, In the Key of New York City was Rebecca’s eleventh book, and it was about the eleven years that she and her husband lived in New York City. After returning to Charlotte, Rebecca found herself focusing much of her time and energy on taking care of her elderly parents. Now that her parents have died, Rebecca has drawn on her experiences of caring for her parents in a new memoir titled Light Falls on Everything: A Daughter’s Memoir of Caregiving, Grief, and Possibility, which the University of North Carolina Press released on March 31, 2026. Here is the link to the publisher’s listing of the book: https://uncpress.org/9781469693217/light-falls-on-everything/
I contacted Rebecca and asked her for more information about her new memoir and her experiences as a Charlotte writer. Here is what she sent to me:
Light Falls on Everything: A Daughter’s Memoir of Caregiving, Grief, and Possibility, my twelfth published book, focuses on the years of caring for my elderly parents after we moved them from Indiana to Charlotte and my husband and I became the “first responders,” with support from the extended family. My parents’ deepest wish had always been to stay together “until the end,” and that is what we attempted to help them do, no matter what it took. It took a lot. As is so often the case with long-term caregiving, many days were shadowed by exhaustion, confusion, heartbreak, and anticipatory grief. Still, light flickered in even the darkest corners, revealing moments of tenderness, laughter, absurdity, surprise, and unrelenting love.
From the very beginning of the caregiving journey—which lasted nearly a decade—I felt compelled to write, if only a few notes on a hospital napkin, on the back of a pharmacy receipt, in the margins of my parents’ desk calendar. At the time, I had no idea that these scribbled notes, and later the segments and chapters that developed from them, might one day comprise a book. I was just trying to get from one day to the next, one night to the next. I now understand that this process was a way to hold myself still for a moment, just long enough to take a few steps out of the scene so I could see my parents—and myself—as characters in an ongoing, universal drama. Mother has been gone five years now; Dad, nearly a decade. And it has taken me yet another decade, since his death, to revise and shape the final book. As if any memoir is ever final. A memoir happens between two covers; it has a clear beginning and end. Life happens outside these covers, continuing its forward movement beyond the boundaries of any memoir.
For me, much of my life happens within the context of Charlotte’s writing community. My history with our “storied” city goes back nearly 50 years. In 1978, when I completed graduate studies at University of South Carolina, I moved to Charlotte to join my husband, Donald Devet, who was an instructional television producer for CMS and also a professional puppeteer, having recently co-founded Grey Seal Puppets. Before that, as a former Marine brat, I’d never lived anywhere for more than a few years at a time and I never imagined I could plant deep roots in any city.
As it turned out, I was wrong, as I so often am! Within a year, I began teaching high school English (first at Olympic and then West Charlotte) and later served as director of the Poetry-in-the-Schools program, where, for fifteen years, I taught poetry to thousands of K-12 students in 110 schools, with assistance from visiting writers including Chuck Sullivan, Ruth Moose, Charleen Swansea, Ellen Johnston-Hale, and Suzanne Newton. Happy sidebar: Two of my former high school poetry students, Julie Funderburk and Michael Sadoff, are now published writers based in Charlotte!
Meanwhile, on the home front, three of my five siblings had moved their families from California and Indiana to Charlotte, thus expanding my role of semi-professional aunt. I was also knee-deep not only in poetry but also in teacher education as part of the UNC Charlotte Writing Project, and in music, performing with the Oratorio Singers and in musicals at The Little Theatre (now called Theatre Charlotte) while also composing music for Grey Seal Puppets’ productions.
But the literary community is what formed my deepest connection to Charlotte. Nearly every writer whom Joseph Bathanti mentioned in a recent Storied Charlotte post also welcomed me, along with many others too numerous to include here. But here’s a short list of folks in poetry critique groups I was part of: First, Cathy Smith Bowers, Judy Goldman, Mary Kratt, and, in later years, Gail Peck, P.B. Newman, Irene Honeycutt, Diana Pinckney, Tony Abbott, Dede Wilson, Barbara Conrad, and Barbara Presnell. I was also connecting with other local writers including Julie Suk, Susan Ludvigson, Dannye Romine Powell, Rick Chess, Chris Davis, Robin Hemley, and Fred Leebron, and with other Carolina writers who provided support and companionship, especially once I began publishing fiction, essays, memoir, and writing craft books—among them Frye Galliard, Ron Rash, Philip Gerard, Doris Betts, and Fred Chappell.
In 1998, Donald and I took a huge personal and professional (some called it “crazy”!) leap in pursuit of a lifelong dream to live in New York City, which turned into a decade-long experience I describe in my 2020 memoir, In the Key of New York City. During that time, I also started teaching in the newly formed Queens University’s MFA program, which brought me to Charlotte for twice-yearly residencies and helped maintain my relationships here. In 2009, we moved back to Charlotte to be closer to family and to set the stage for caring for my parents, eventually moving them from Indiana to Charlotte. Thus began the eight-year caregiving experience that is at the center of my newest memoir.
I began my literary life in our “storied” city and am grateful to be continuing it with support from friends, family, students, readers, and fellow writers. Charlotte Lit will host a book launch for Light Falls on Everything: A Memoir of Caregiving, Grief, and Possibility, on Wednesday, April 22, at 6:00 p.m. at the Charlotte Lit studio (601 E. 5th Street, Suite 160). To save a seat, register here! I look forward to seeing readers of Storied Charlotte in the audience! Thanks again, Mark, for the chance to contribute to this ongoing conversation.
I congratulate Rebecca on the publication of Light Falls on Everything, and I thank her for her many contributions to Storied Charlotte’s community of readers and writers.