May 5, 2011, Greencastle, Ind. — Donna Jean Dreyer, a 1953 graduate of DePauw University, has authored Decrescendo: A Memoir of Love and Caregiving. It is her first full-length book.
"In 1979, a few months after our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, a doctor listened to my husband's heart and identified a decrescendo murmur indicating a leaking aortic valve," notes Dreyer, whose husband, Bill, was a 1952 DePauw graduate. "Because Bill was a musician (as well as being a theater director), this description caught his attention. It was an apt metaphor for the rest of his life. He died just shy of our fiftieth anniversary after slowly fading from the effects of congestive heart failure. This is the story 
of our relationship and how we sought to maintain the balance and the romance as Bill's strength diminished and I took up the slack."
"Rarely are we invited so deeply into the heart and soul of a marriage as this book offers in its beautiful, moving description of fifty years of growing together 'in sickness and in health,'" says Carolyn Treadway, a personal life coach, who is quoted on the back of the book's jacket. "Decrescendo offers example and inspiration to anyone who seeks enduring relationship and deep engagement with life."
Learn more, and order the book, at Amazon.com.
You're also invited to visit Donna Jean Dreyer's blog.