Can we every really know someone? The provocative intrigue of this question propels The Widow's Guide to Dead Bastards, a chilling, probing memoir by Jessica Waite.
Calgary, Alberta-based Waite and her husband, Sean, had been married for 16 years. Waite deeply loved Sean, a corporate CEO deemed in "perfect health" who was on his way to a bright future. While Sean was traveling for business in Texas, Waite missed four phone calls and discovered that an emergency room nurse in Houston had been calling: Sean suffered a sudden heart attack and died. This devastating news tasked Waite with having to explain Sean's death to their nine-year-old son, Dash, and with navigating the bureaucratic minutia of bringing Sean's body home and planning an emotional funeral.
Mourning and mired in grief, Waite begins to reminisce--and convey to readers--anecdotes, good and bad, about her marriage. The fallout from Sean's death was compounded when Waite uncovered shocking secrets that revealed how little she really knew about the man with whom she had built a life over 17 years. These include Sean's drug use, pornography addiction, compulsive overspending, and extramarital affairs.
Waite's first book is darkly intense, but her wry storytelling style, along with short chapters, adds needed levity. As she processes, copes with, and reconciles the truth about her husband's life, the courageous Waite ultimately discovers--and comes to accept--hard truths about herself. -- Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines