Kerry has written a wonderful book that tells an astonishing story… a fitting tribute to a remarkable man and the woman he loved. — Professor William Rosenberg, University College London
This is both a memoir and a love letter from Kerry McPhail to her husband Jim who died of Hepatitis C, leaving her a young widow.
‘Time is so precious now. Summer slinks away, leaving behind an empty husk of itself. We wander round the common and I lean against the old oak tree. Jim takes my photograph, smiling at me long after he has clicked the shutter. Our unspoken thoughts honour the fact that he knows and I know. Fate has given us an impossible, beautiful, priceless gift and placed it in our hands. We hold the knowledge of our own fragility.’
Jim McPhail is a survivor. His childhood is one of soul-numbing poverty; his adolescence lived amongst drug dealers on the mean streets of Glasgow. But at his lowest ebb, he turns his life around. He enters rehab, kicks his addiction and finds his soul-mate, Kerry. Fate then deals its cruelest card. Jim is diagnosed with advanced Hepatitis C.
The story of Jim’s roller coaster life, told here by his wife Kerry, is a tribute to the power of love and the will to carry on and rejoice no matter what life hurls at you. Told with throw-away black humour, respect, wit, poignancy and longing, Kerry offers this fine tribute to the man she loved ‘more than life itself’.
