4 Memoirs So Compelling, They Read Like Novels

What happens when your high-school sweetheart, husband of more than two decades and the father of your children undergoes a medical procedure commonly known as the mother of all surgeries—and comes out the other side with his brain altered, rendering him a near-stranger? "The man who survived on smarts, charm and looks has vanished," writes Sonya Lea. "Who he was, isn't." In this deeply honest memoir, Lea attempts to refind her husband, now that she and he can no longer communicate with, or relate to, each another. Though Lea's prose style can, at times, lack grace, it's the details and the honesty of her self-interrogation that make this memoir as addictive as a thriller. Structured in sections that alternate between Lea and Richard's early years and Richard's diagnosis, operation and recovery, you'll race through these pages, eager to find out if Richard's memory will return, and whether Lea will be able to find peace in her transformed marriage. Lea doesn't shy away from writing the difficult scenes—central to the narrative is her struggle with alcoholism and a gutsy investigation into how the illness decimated her and Richard's sex life (and how they put it back together). An admirable and heartening story about love, the resilience of marriage and what "in sickness and in health" really means.