Unencumbered by religious agendas and pat answers, Encountering the Edge satisfies our curiosity concerning what people believe in, shrug their shoulders at, laugh at, and most care about as they face Act 3, Scene 3, of their lives. Join Chaplain Kaplan as she visits her hospice patients, and share her sense of adventure and openness to the experience. The author also reveals the inner workings of a hospice agency from a chaplain's viewpoint both on the road and in the office. Readers will encounter odd, poignant, revealing, and even amusing characters, such as a countercultural type who...

In an amused tone, Kaplan offers gentle science fiction that is sympathetic to the human condition. The first chapter, -Escapade,- features Gomer and Muriel Ackerman, a retro couple in the mid-21st Century who are searching for old-fashioned values such as privacy in a twentieth-century settlement but do not get what they bargained for. In -A Dementia Returnee,- their friend Virginia becomes one of the first people cured of dementia but who runs into an unexpected detour to complete health. Later in the book, Gomer's wife dies and he seeks consolation from a custom-designed robot that...