KATE QUINTON'S DAYS

by Susan Sheehan

Houghton Mifflin; 158 pages; $15.95

Kate Quinton is 80, and has lived most of her life as a sturdy, hard working, house-proud member of the lower middle class in Brooklyn. Crippled by arthritis and suffering from several other ailments, she is about to be packed off to a nursing home, a dread prison from which 75% of those who enter never emerge. Kate Quinton's Days, first published in The New Yorker, is the true story of the efforts, made largely by Claire, her partially disabled daughter, and some dedicated social workers, to help Kate come home. The return could not have occurred without an enlightened program for home care of the elderly, still in the experimental stage. But it is the human story that makes this account so affecting. Susan Sheehan uses a pains taking documentary style based on what must have been exhaustive interviews.

To maintain their independence, Kate and Claire must cope with a parade of day-care workers. It begins with Mercedes Robbins, who arrives in designer jeans and high heels, and extends through fire-breathing fundamentalists, people who show up late or fall asleep after they arrive until finally a friendly, energetic Trinidadian nurse takes over and be comes the book's unlikely heroine. For a story of two isolated women, Sheehan's canvas is crowded with lively figures, including Claire's callous sister and a diabolical city administrator. The author's prose is as prosy and readable as Trollope's, and she has written a lion-hearted little book.