You may remember author Joyce Maynard from her popular “Domestic Affairs” column or her early novel To Die For. Now she’s coming back to her native New Hampshire, with several New York Times bestsellers under her belt, to share her new memoir, The Best of Us: A Memoir.
At the age of 59, Maynard met the first true partner she had ever known. She married Jim Barringer on a New Hampshire hillside with friends and children gathered, fireworks exploding as they talked about the trips they would take, the olive trees they would plant, the food they would make together. How lucky, everyone said, that they had found each other when they did.
Just after their one-year anniversary, Jim was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And 19 months later, having shared a struggle that consumed both their lives, Joyce lay beside him while he took his last breath.
The Best of Us: A Memoir is their story. Maynard writes about the early days of their romance, their wedding and their adjustment to living together decades after each had been divorced. And then, how everything changed during the months of Jim’s illness, and she began, painfully, to imagine a life without him.
Maynard will be at Gibson’s Bookstore on Thursday at 7 p.m. to talk about it. The event is free and open to the public.
Insider staff
