🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

A devastatingly intimate memoir, written by American writer and actor Rob Delaney, recounting the sudden and shattering tragic illness of his baby boy, Henry, during the family’s brief hiatus in London, England, where the author taped a TV series (a terrible and horrific pairing of a career-altering incredible opportunity with the worst thing one could possibly imagine, ever). How else could a parent react when his beautiful and previously-healthy baby (seeming so, at least) not yet even a single year old, becomes ill, with what turns out to be an insidious and ultimately deadly form of brain cancer.

So raw and profound a story is this that it was difficult for this reader to proceed in parts, (without bolting to the next room to hug or cuddle a family member, or a pet) – recognizing that this story needed to be read, if for no other reason than to know, to share, to understand, as much as this is possible, how fleeting and fragile is the hold each of us has on our own lives, on the lives of our loved ones, and each of those around us.

I’m forever grateful that there are individuals, such as this wonderful author, who are able, through their trauma, and perhaps as part of their own healing process, to let us in – told with colossal grief, and grace, and humor, and pain, footholds on his journey with little Henry (who lived through too much for even this casual reader to bear), laid out for us to experience through him, and with him, reminding us that we are all connected, all hanging on by this thread of life, wherever (and whenever), it may take us.

A beautiful, searing, gaze into the very best and the absolutely worst places parental love can take us to, this book is a rare and illuminating gift.

A great big thank you to the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for an ARC of this book, all thoughts presented are my own.