I've never followed the Crankshaft comic strip because the few times I did try it I found the grumpy old man at its center, Ed Crankshaft, to be more annoying than humorous. Fortunately, he's more of a supporting character in this collection that focuses on the two elderly sisters who live next to him and a married couple he has known for years. One person in each of the two pairs is suffering from Alzheimer's.

Lillian and Lucy McKenzie get the most screen time, and their story begins with Lucy's usual absentmindedness becoming more frequent and extreme. Lucy bonds with Crankshaft's granddaughter, Mindy Murdoch, and spends much of their time together telling about a lost love from the 1930s. Those flashbacks become more frequent as Lucy starts getting lost in the past, and hidden details and secrets are revealed. Meanwhile, in the present day, Lillian becomes more and more distraught as the weight of caregiving for a sister who frequently wanders away from home becomes increasingly overwhelming.

A parallel, secondary story has Ralph Meckler reminiscing with Crankshaft's grandson, Max, an aspiring musician, about how he met his wife Helen in New York City when he was starting his own career as a musician. Helen has been in assisted living for a long while, but Ralph is able to give her one last hurrah that celebrates the beginning of their love.

Both stories have a sweet melancholy, serving up romance leavened by the toll of dementia à la The Notebook.

The storytelling is a bit awkward due to the comic strip origins with every third panel needing to be a punchline and Crankshaft having to show up regularly and drop some of his signature malapropisms since he's the title character. Also, these strips were not consecutive in the comic strip's run, so the story skips around a bit randomly at times and the kid characters become teens without warning, but it still manages to stick together pretty well despite the necessary cobbling. If readers are unaware that Crankshaft is part of the Funky Winkerbean universe, they might be a little confused or lost when he and the gang from Montoni's Pizza gets involved in a minor little subplot.

I'm certainly not going to become a Crankshaft regular, but this does remind me that I should get back to reading the Complete Funky Winkerbean books that came out a while back. ( )