Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story - Softcover

"Fans of Eat, Pray, Love will devour this book."
-- John Searles, MSNBC.com

"A memoir so raw you feel like it's your best friend telling you her story."
-- Glamour, "Must-Read"

"A smart, rueful memoir of love, betrayal and survival."
-- O, the Oprah magazine

"You gobble up [Happens Every Day], rooting for the engaging Gillies... A guilty pleasure for readers."
-- USA Today

"I couldn't help but admire her bravery in exposing the dark side of her seemingly perfect life in such a good-humored, self-effacing way.... You feel nothing but deepest sympathy."
-- Elle

Isabel Gillies had a wonderful life—a handsome, intelligent, loving husband who was a professor; two glorious toddlers; a beautiful house in their Midwestern college town; the time and place to express all her ebullience and affection and optimism. Suddenly, the life Isabel had made crumbled. Her husband, Josiah, announced that he was leaving her and their two young sons. "Happens every day," said a friend.

Far from a self-pitying diatribe, Happens Every Day reads like an intimate conversation between friends. It is a dizzyingly candid, compulsively readable, ultimately redemptive story about love, marriage, family, heartbreak, and the unexpected turns of a life. On the one hand, reading this book is like watching a train wreck. On the other hand, as Gillies herself says, it is about trying to light a candle instead of cursing the darkness, and loving your life even if it has slipped away.