Gunfights are lost in milliseconds. Who we have become in the years leading up to that moment can make the difference between life and death. The ways we respond in the long hours and days after shape a life of grief and suffering, or a life of post-traumatic growth.

In this gripping and heart-wrenching memoir, Abby Eichorn relives her last moments with her ex-husband, Clay, as he attempts to murder her in a drunken stupor, and she struggles to stay alive. In the aftermath, she realizes she had been fighting to survive for years, and the hardest struggle was yet to come.

Abby structures her memoir through letters to loved ones written while desperately seeking peace. She reflects on her early dating experiences, her upbringing in the Christian church, generational family dynamics, and her own growth, all while vividly evoking the events of that night. She walks us through her first year without Clay as she cycles through raw grief, healing, and self-discovery, and shares the recovery milestones reached while fighting to reclaim her life and identity after trauma. Survivors of domestic violence, those still enmeshed in it, and anyone struggling with self-acceptance will find inspiration, connection and permission to come first in their own healing journey when reading Abby's story.