In Sickness and In Health

When twenty-seven-year-old Laura Mauldin moved to New York for graduate school, she fell in love. But just months into the relationship, her partner’s leukemia returned—and in a country without adequate systems for long-term care, Mauldin found herself transformed from romantic partner to unpaid, full-time caregiver, struggling to keep the woman she loved alive in a system designed to let them both fall through the cracks.

Now a sociologist and professor of disability studies, Mauldin turns her private pain into a searing public investigation. Speaking with couples across the country navigating the fallout of chronic illness and disability, she examines relationships marked by extraordinary intimacy and resilience, yet pushed to the brink by an ableist society that relies on unpaid caregiving labor while withholding meaningful support.

Urgent, unflinching, and full of grace, In Sickness and In Health: Love Stories from the Front Lines of America’s Caregiving Crisis calls for a radical reimagining of care—not as an individual act of devotion, but as a collective responsibility.

Join the New America Fellows Program for a conversation with 2024 New America Fellows Laura Mauldin and Casey Gerald about In Sickness and in Health.

Speakers:
Laura Mauldin
2024 New America Fellow 
Author, In Sickness and in Health

Casey Gerald
2024 New America Fellow 

Copies of In Sickness and In Health are available for purchase here through our bookselling partner Solid State Books.