Emmy Award–winning sportscaster King has written a bittersweet love story that will resonate with many readers (and may even remind some of Calvin Trillin's bestselling About Alice
). King's wife, Maggie Smith, born in 1948, was his childhood sweetheart, whom he recalls as “an awkward tomboy with hearing aid wires tangled in her dress at the play lot” and later “a blossoming beauty.” Married in 1970, they stayed “crazy in love” for 32 years until her death from cancer in 2002. Those were challenging years spent overcoming adversity: “She was a woman who battled poverty, severe hearing loss at an early age, progressive blindness, melanoma, breast cancer and finally ovarian cancer. Yet she was the happiest person I've ever known.”Remembering the happy times, King also covers their fears as darkness and death loomed. He details diagnoses and looks back at such frightening moments as Maggie's fall from a train platform in downtown Chicago. Along with the sad setbacks, he captures Maggie's free spirit and her “childlike zest for living.” People with disabilities and those in relationships with them will find this an inspirational book. 15 pages of b&w and color photos. (Two thirds of royalties will go to the American Cancer Society and the Chicago Lighthouse.) (Oct. 13)
