Isabel Gillies had a wonderful life-a handsome, intelligent, loving husband who was a professor; two glorious toddlers; a beautiful house in their Midwestern college town; the time and place to express all her ebullience and affection and optimism. Suddenly, the life Isabel had made crumbled. Her husband, Josiah, announced that he was leaving her and their two young sons. "Happens every day," said a friend. Far from a self-pitying diatribe, Happens Every Day reads like an intimate conversation between friends. It is a dizzyingly can-did, compulsively readable, ultimately redemptive story about love, marriage, family, heartbreak, and the unexpected turns of a life. On the one hand, experiencing this book is like watching a train wreck. On the other hand, as Gillies herself says, it is about trying to light a candle instead of cursing the darkness, and loving your life even if it has slipped away.
"Isabel Gillies has written a heartbreaking memoir about the wild unpredictability of the human heart. She is stunningly candid and reminds every reader that, yes, lives fall apart, husbands leave wives, people start over -- Happens Every Day. Gillies is moving, funny, authentic, and never a victim. Her voice is instantly compelling."
Elisabeth Robinson, author of The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters
"Isabel Gillies tells the story of the breakup of her 'perfect' marriage with astonishing honesty, sharp humor, and not a shred of self-pity. This is a memoir that reads like a gripping mystery and a moving coming-of-age tale."
David Auburn, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Proof
