In the spirit of Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air and Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking comes Carrying the Tiger: Living with Cancer, Dying with Grace, Finding Joy While Grieving by Tony Stewart, a powerful story of love, loss, and recovery.

When Stewart’s wife, Lynn, receives a sudden and devastating diagnosis, their scramble begins to find effective treatment, navigate life-threatening setbacks, learn to live fully in the shadow of death, and, ultimately, to share the intimate grace of her final departure from this world. After Lynn’s death, with the help of friends old and new, Tony slowly climbs out of his shattering grief and, surprisingly, eases toward new love.

There is uncertainty, fear, and sorrow in his journey, but also tenderness and joy, along with a renewed perspective on what it means to live and love with one’s whole heart. Adapted from more than a decade of posts on CaringBridge.org that chronicled Tony’s odyssey, both at Lynn’s side and afterward, Carrying the Tiger is an honest, passionate, life-affirming tale about the full circle of life and death, one that offers a deeply intimate look at grief and its hopeful aftermath.