The Seagull

A love story, 'The Seagull' will warm and inspire you. Brave and intimate in its honest, often surprising detail, you'll be hard-pressed to put Stafford's memoir down. When her life changes, abruptly, her desire not to be defined by her past drives her forward. Her courageous journey through love and loss, and finding her new direction in lands far away from the safety of those she knows well, as well as the comforts of her home, will make you question every small detail of your life. At 53, when her husband Bruce loses his cancer battle, Julie Stafford takes a journey, way beyond the perimeters of what has become comfortable for her, to explore who she can become in the next phase of her life without the man she's adored for more than 30 years always by her side. She grieves her lost love in Dubrovnik. When she arrives there, Croatia's ancient city is only recently reborn splendid from its own period of grief after a war hell-bent on crippling it failed. She redefines her identity tasting Italy's exuberance, and in the city of love (Paris), she asks if she's entitled to have more than one extraordinary love story in her lifetime. When Paris opens the doors of her entitlement, she writes a letter of expectation to the love she hopes will find her. Julie Stafford's, 'The Seagull', is a book for everyone. It reminds us that physical age doesn't define who we are or who we can become, and that we can each redefine the stories we are currently living in, or walking toward, to find the trembling happiness that Stafford believes was always destiny's intention for us.