My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward

A heart-wrenching yet hopeful memoir of a young marriage that is redefined by mental illness and affirms the power of love. Mark and Giulia‘s life together began as a fairy-tale romance. They fell in love at eighteen, got married at twenty-four, and started their dream life in San Francisco soon after. But when Giulia was twenty-seven, she suffered a terrifying and unexpected psychotic break that landed her in the psych ward for nearly a month. One day she was vibrant and well adjusted; the next, she was delusional and suicidal, convinced that her loved ones were not safe. Eventually, Giulia fully recovered and the couple had a son. Soon after Jonas was born, Giulia had another breakdown, and then a third a few years after that. Pushed to the edge of the abyss, everything the couple had once taken for granted was upended. An exploration of the fragility of the mind and the tenacity of the human spirit, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward is, above all, a love story that raises profound questions: How do we care for the people most important to us? What and whom do we live for? Breathtaking in its candor, radiant with compassion, and written with dazzling lyricism, Lukach‘s intensely personal odyssey through the harrowing years of his wife‘s mental illness is anchored by an abiding devotion to family that will affirm readers‘ faith in the power of love.