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When Pulitzer Prize winning Australian author Geraldine Brooks' husband Tony Horwitz died suddenly - she had no time to grieve - between supporting their two sons, organising the funeral, dealing with cancelled insurance and frozen credit cards.
She and Tony met at Columbia University Journalism school in the early 80s, spent their early years together in conflict zones as foreign correspondents, before settling down to raise their boys on Martha's Vineyard.
It was only three years after his death, that she acknowledged she was just pretending to be normal - and really wasn't ok.
She retreated to a remote island off Tasmania to grieve.
The result is her memoir, Memorial Days, which she says was her therapy and enabled her to find peace.
