This Shining Life

For Rich, life is golden. He fizzes with happiness and love. But Rich has an incurable brain tumour. After Rich dies, his wife Ruth can't see how to how to keep living, and their young son Ollie is intent on working out the meaning of life. Because everything happens for a reason. Doesn't it?

Rich leaves behind a family without a father, a husband, a son and a best friend. And he also leaves behind a present for each of them. But while Ollie tries to understand the message within each present, Ruth finds herself adrift. The grief that is threatening to drown her has also unearthed long buried pain. Pain she has to face if she is to have any chance of moving on...

Harriet Kline weaves together the voices of a grieving family and paints an achingly beautiful picture of love in all its forms: absent, lost and, ultimately, regained.