Cathy Says This Is "an exquisite, heart rending novel"

In 2005, celebrated novelist Francisco Goldman married a beautiful young writer named Aura Estrada in a romantic Mexican hacienda. The month before their second anniversary, during a long-awaited holiday, Aura broke her neck while body surfing. Francisco, blamed for Aura’s death by her family and blaming himself, wanted to die, too. Instead, he wrote Say Her Name, a novel chronicling his great love and unspeakable loss, tracking the stages of grief when pure love gives way to bottomless pain.

Suddenly a widower, Goldman collects everything he can about his wife, hungry to keep Aura alive with every memory. From her childhood and university days in Mexico City with her fiercely devoted mother to her studies at Columbia University, through their newlywed years in New York City and travels to Mexico and Europe—and always through the prism of her gifted writings—Goldman seeks her essence and grieves her loss. Humor leavens the pain as he lives through the madness of grief and creates a living portrait of a love as joyous as it is deep and profound.

Say Her Name is a love story, a bold inquiry into destiny and accountability, and a tribute to Aura, who she was and who she would've been.
Cathy says:
"Say Her Name is an exquisite, heart rending novel of the great love between the young writer Aura Estrada and Francisco Goldman, and of Aura's tragic death in a freak swimming accident. Say Her Name is a celebration of the brief life of this gifted, beautiful, complicated young woman. Though written as a novel, much of the story feels like a true account of their relationship, her life and death and Francisco's grief in the aftermath. Though it's impossible to know how much of the story is true, it is in fact all true in its honesty of emotion and beauty of language. I was very moved by this story of deep love and great loss."