Ann Hedreen's story of what it was like to become a mom just as her own beautiful, brainy mother began to lose her mind to an unforgiving disease. Arlene was a copper minerâs daughter who was divorced twice, widowed once, raised six kids singlehandedly, survived the turbulent â60s, and got her B.A. and M.A. at 40 so she could support her family as a Seattle schoolteacherâonly to start showing signs of Alzheimerâs disease in her late fifties, taking Ann and her siblings on a long descent they never could have anticipated or imagined. For two decadesâas Ann married, had a daughter and a son, navigated career changes and marital crises and built a life making documentary films with her husbandâshe watched her once-invincible mom disappear. From Seattle to Haiti to the mine-gouged Finntown neighborhood in Butte, Montana where Arlene was born and grew up; from Arleneâs favorite tennis club to a locked geropsychiatric ward, Her Beautiful Brain tells the heartbreaking story of a daughterâs love for a mother who is lost in the wilderness of an unpredictable and harrowing illness.