Stories I Forgot to Tell You

Dorothy Gallagher's husband, Ben Sonnenberg, the author of Lost Property: Memoirs and Confessions of a Bad Boy, died more than a decade ago. At the time of his death, he had suffered from multiple sclerosis for many years and was almost completely paralyzed, but his wonderful, playful mind remained quite undimmed. In the ten sections of If You're Ever Back This Way, Gallagher moves freely and intuitively between present and past to evoke the life they shared together and her life after his death, alone,and yet at the same time never without thought of him, in a present that is haunted but also comforted by the recollection of their common past. She talks about growing tomatoes on a new deck-and as she does she recalls her missing husband's elegant clothes and English affectations, what she knew about him and didn't know, the devastating toll of his disease and the ways the two of them found to deal with it. Her mother, eventually succumbing to dementia, is also here, along with friends, an old typewriter, episodes from a writing life, and her husband's last days. This slim book about irremediable loss and unending love distills the essence of a lifetime--