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Lisa Ohlen Harris lives in northwest Oregon with her husband and four daughters. She is the author of the Middle East memoir Through the Veil.<i>The Fifth Season</i> is an eloquent weather warning, opening the door to public discussion. With honesty and compassion, Lisa Ohlen Harris draws on personal experience to delineate the difficult end-of-life questions we all must face."" - Judith Kitchen, author of Half in Shade<br /><br />""In <i>The Fifth Season</i>, Lisa Ohlen Harris shows us how caregiving is an act that requires both self-awareness and selflessness. In prose that does not flinch from the hard realities of caring for her ailing mother-in-law, Harris also evokes the tenderness at the heart of this intimate act. She comes to understand that, as she puts it, this, too, is a holy union."" - Brenda Miller, author of <i>Listening Against the Stone</i><br /><br />""Lisa Ohlen Harris's <i>The Fifth Season</i>, an unflinching chronicle of caring for her ill mother-in-law, is also a love story between unlikely partners, ""strangers in blood"", whose chosen bond, though tested again and again, never breaks."" - Rebecca McClanahan, author of <i>The Tribal Knot</i> and <i>The Riddle Song and Other Rememberings</i>
Harris helped Jeanne file an advance directive specifying that no extraordinary measures were to be taken to preserve life. As they navigated the healthcare system in Jeanne's final months, Harris and her mother-in-law realized that an advance directive is not as clear and controlled as it seems. End of life issues involve a series of small decisions—sneaky ones, with no big drama—and life support is already established before any one big decision is made.
In The Fifth Season, Harris's recounting of those years bestows illuminating immediacy on the difficulties of caring for an elderly parent while raising four young children in an extended family household.
Chronicling that last season of love and struggle as she grappled with ethical convictions and personality clashes, Harris finds her way through conflicted emotions to a place of compassion and peace.