About the Author

MARION WINIK is heard regularly on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered." She was the recipient of a 1993 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Creative Nonfiction and has been voted Favorite Local Writer by the readers of the Austin Chronicle for four consecutive years. First Comes Love won the Violet Crown Award for Best Book by an Austen Writer, 1996, from the Austen Writer's League. The author of Telling, she lives in Austin, Texas, with her two sons.

Reviews

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

"Gritty, funny, moving, horrific, outrageous—and, above all, fearlessly honest.... ultimately a joyous story." —Newsday

Decidedly unfaint-hearted... Marion Winik is resilient, hardy, unfazable; this self-described suburban wannabe is a frontier woman in disguise." —The New York Times Book Review

"A true story stripped of fine writing or cheap analysis.... I won't be the only reader who can't put it down." —San Francisco Chronicle

"Beautiful ... intense and intimate." —Washington Post Book World

National Public Radio commentator Winik's memoir will appeal primarily to romantics who believe in the primacy of love and who can empathize with a woman whose husband in a rocky marriage committed suicide. More realistic types will wonder why Winik, although a heavy drug user at the time, allowed herself to be courted by a flamboyant homosexual junkie; she was subsequently to learn that he had been HIV-positive for two or three years before they met. They married in 1986 in Manhattan. Tony Heubach, a former ice-dancer, was a considerate person, although after the couple had two sons, his interest in heterosexual relations waned and the marriage began to unravel. His drug use increased sharply and, as his HIV turned into AIDS, his addiction became alarming: periods of catatonia alternated with prolonged sessions of weeping and, on a few occasions, assaults on his wife. With pain so acute and constant that even morphine was minimally effective, he requested her help to end his life. She prepared the bowl of strawberry-banana yogurt with 60 capsules of Nembutal that killed him in 1994. (Apr.)

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

"Gritty, funny, moving, horrific, outrageous-and, above all, fearlessly honest.... ultimately a joyous story." -Newsday

Decidedly unfaint-hearted... Marion Winik is resilient, hardy, unfazable; this self-described suburban wannabe is a frontier woman in disguise." -The New York Times Book Review

"A true story stripped of fine writing or cheap analysis.... I won't be the only reader who can't put it down." -San Francisco Chronicle

"Beautiful ... intense and intimate." -Washington Post Book World