The Widow's Guide to Dead Bastards
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- USD 14.99
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- USD 14.99
Descripción editorial
“You will stay up all night reading this gem” (Christie Tate, New York Times bestselling author) about a widow whose life is turned upside down when she uncovers the truth about her late husband. A lyrical, witty, and deeply moving memoir of betrayal and forgiveness.
While mourning her husband’s sudden death, Jessica Waite discovered shocking secrets that undermined everything she thought she knew about the man she’d loved and trusted. From secret affairs to drug use and a pornography addiction, Waite was overwhelmed reconciling this devastating information with her new reality as a widowed single mom. Then, to further complicate matters, strange, inexplicable coincidences forced her to consider whether her husband was reaching back from beyond the grave.
With unflinching honesty, Waite details her tumultuous love story and the pain of adjusting to the new normal she built for herself and her son. “A candid, raw chronicle of bereavement” (Kirkus Reviews), The Widow’s Guide to Dead Bastards is also a lyrical exploration of mental health, single parenthood, and betrayal that demonstrates that the most moving love stories aren’t perfect—they’re flawed and poignantly real.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Essayist Waite debuts with a bracing account of her husband's sudden death and the secrets she unearthed after he was gone. In 1995, a 22-year-old Waite met and fell for Sean while they were both teaching English in Japan. They married and spent 20 years cycling between happy days and rough patches, owing in part to jobs that required frequent travel and Sean's bipolar disorder. In 2015, Sean died of a heart attack, and as Waite combed through his belongings, she made some rattling discoveries: Sean kept massive stores of digital pornography, hoarded cannabis despite insisting he didn't use it, carried on multiple affairs, and lied about the couple's finances. Reeling, Waite threw herself into grief support groups and writing to cope with the betrayals. Eventually, she came to a fragile acceptance of her husband's messy humanity. "What if the function of grief... is to guide human beings to a deeper understanding of the nature of life," Waite asks in the book's final pages. With startling compassion and surprising wit ("I'm looking at nine vaginas at the same time... laid out in a three-by-three grid, like the Brady Bunch family," she writes of finding Sean's porn stash), Waite shows how such an understanding might be achieved. This stirring study of loss and forgiveness isn't easily forgotten.
