Michael Harding

On frosty nights, as he sits by a flickering fire, Michael Harding withdraws into the stillness of winter and begins to reckon with age and death. As stories emerge from the shadows, we meet a young boy whose arrival brings hope, but whose journey will know winter's path. November is a rainstorm, December a bleak twilight, but as January dawns and the icethaws, the fragile light of love penetrates the dark, bringing beauty to the earth and making new beginnings possible. In writing of shadowed beauty, Midwinter is a poignant exploration of a season of loss, and the glimpses of hope that can follow even the longest nights. Snow falls within. Blanketing the heart in peace. Winter's dream takes hold. This book is dedicated to everyone at Pieta House, a suicide prevention charity. This is a work of non-fiction apart from the character of Martin who is fictional but whose story reflects the heartache and loss so many families endure every year.

''I wanted him to be someone he wasn''t. I wanted me to be someone I wasn''t.''A stunning new book from the number one bestselling, award-winning author of All the Things Left Unsaid and Staring at Lakes.To mark his 70th birthday Michael Harding travelled to Spain and walked the Camino de Santiago. Yet, as he set off on his pilgrimage, he found he wasn''t alone. Accompanying him on his 126-kilometre walk in theheat of the Spanish sun was the ghost of his long-dead father, a distant and aloof figure whom he lost when he was only twenty-two years old.Here, with searing honesty and beautifully wrought prose, Harding examines how this man, who had diedalmost half a century ago, could have had such a profound effect on the writer''s life.From the Ireland of his youth, to the time of his father''s death, and to the holy wells and pubs he frequented in search of a connection with a man he never really knew, I Loved Him From The Day He Died is a heartfeltexamination of love, forgiveness and letting go - told with simple vulnerability and profound insight.