Lovely Tragic Miracle: A Memoir

Early on a Wednesday morning in October 2010, Karyl McKendry got the phone call that everyone dreads: Pat, her 45-year-old husband and high school sweetheart, had been killed in a car accident. Even worse, her 21-year-old son had been driving.

Her life changed in that instant. Suddenly she was a young widow, living in a falling-down house, and responsible for raising four children. She was left to manage finances, funeral arrangements, and overwhelming grief-alone.

Lovely Tragic Miracle is Karyl's story of the first two years of her journey as a young widow and the surprising things she learned along the way: that grief-while painful-is healing, that friends and family feel desperate to help but often don't know how, and that even in the midst of great tragedy, lovely moments surface in unexpected ways.