On Sale August 10, 2021
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A turbulent romance meets harrowing medical mystery: the true story of the author’s twenty-year marriage defined by her husband’s chronic illness—and a testament to the endurance of love.
Eleanor met Aaron when she was just a teenager and he—older, experienced, and irresistibly charming—was working at a local record store. Escaping the clichés of fleeting young love, their summer romance bloomed into a relationship that survived college and culminated in a marriage and two children. From the outside looking in, their life had all the trappings of what most would consider a success story.
But, as in any marriage, things weren’t always as they seemed. On top of the typical stresses of parenting, money, and work, there were the untended wounds of depression, addiction, and childhood trauma. And then one day, out of nowhere: a rash appeared on Aaron’s arms. Soon, it had morphed into painful lesions covering his body. Eleanor was as baffled as the doctors. There was no obvious diagnosis, let alone a cure. And as years passed and the lesions gave way to Aaron’s increasingly disturbed concerns about the source of his sickness, the husband she loved seemed to unravel before her eyes. A new fissure ruptured in their marriage, and new questions piled onto old ones: Where does physical illness end and mental illness begin? Where does one person end and another begin? And how do we exist alongside someone else’s suffering?
Emotional, intimate, and at times agonizing, Everything I Have Is Yours tells the story of a marriage tested by powerful forces outside both partners’ control. It’s not only a memoir of a wife’s tireless quest to heal her husband, but also one that asks just what it means to accept someone as they are.
“Everything I Have is Yours is a gripping portrait of a marriage so full of love, chaos, and heart-breaking, head-slapping contradictions and consolations that it will leave you wondering how any of us survives the institution. Eleanor Henderson is a writer of extraordinary talent, depth, and feeling, and this memoir might be the most candid book I’ve ever read.”
— Adrienne Brodeur, bestselling author of Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
“A love story for the ages. A riveting medical mystery. A heartbreaking family epic. A charming coming of age tale. Eleanor Henderson’s brilliant debut memoir is all these things at once. But perhaps the most apt description for this book would be: absorbing. I dare you to put it down once you’ve turned the first page. I loved it.”
— Joanna Rakoff, bestselling author of My Salinger Year
“Love is patient, love is kind, but in Eleanor Henderson’s new memoir, love is also senseless, chaotic, pathological. You want a peek behind the curtain of someone else’s marriage? Read this book. You won’t be able to put it down.”
— Mary Beth Keane, bestselling author of Ask Again, Yes
“Propulsive and brutally honest, Everything I Have Is Yours tells the story of one woman’s addiction to saving the addict she loves. Can a marriage built upon crisis and trauma survive? Where is the line between self-sacrifice and self-destruction? And can we rewrite the damaging narratives that shape our own stories so that our children, at last, will stop repeating them? A raw, beautiful book that champions radical acceptance as a means of beginning anew.”
— Anna Solomon, author of The Book of V.
“Everything I Have Is Yours took my breath away. In prose both poetic and precise, this rich, resonant exploration of codependency and chronic illness also offers an important challenge to our notions of strength and weakness, sick and well, victim and aggressor, and forces us to ask difficult questions about the limits of devotion. This book is heartrending and profound—it will be a gift to so many who wonder if they’re alone.”
— Nina Renata Aron, author of Good Morning, Destroyer of Men’s Souls
“[Henderson’s] prose is all fine turns of phrase with the rawest of nerve endings… A memoir of interest to anyone coping with a loved one’s struggle with illness and dependency.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Henderson’s writing will pull at your every heart string. She is raw, emotional, vulnerable. Through it all, she allows herself to be wholly human…. Everything I Have Is Yours is above all else, the story of a marriage that, like any, is filled with both an abundance of love and an abundance of obstacles…. Hers is the story of two people determined to overcome the hand that has been dealt to them, two people who love each other so deeply that they refuse to let anything tear them apart.”
—Associated Press
“Wrenching, immersive…Her memoir has aspects of medical mystery and horror story, but most readers will leave it with the impression of having taken in a love story as blisteringly beautiful as it is truthful.”
—Shelf Awareness
“[Henderson] gracefully executes a triple toe loop (as a wife, a mother and a caregiver), then nails the landing with humor and a certain offbeat panache…the generosity of Henderson’s memoir will melt your icy heart.”
—Elisabeth Egan, New York Times Book Review