By Karen McCarraher

Available As Is is a memoir of a middle-aged woman’s search for meaning in her life after a devastating loss.  Debbie Weiss is 50 years old when her husband of 32 years, George, dies of cancer.  Debbie is devastated.  She and George have been together since he took her to her senior prom.  She is totally lost.  She knows nothing about their finances or even the pass codes to George’s computer files where all the bills are kept.  Debbie is a former attorney who has not practiced for eleven years.  She quit her job to start a family but unfortunately, that never happened.

Debbie is totally distraught.  She buries her feelings in drinking Manhattans and watching Netflix.  After a few months, she pulls herself together and believes she should start dating.  She signs up on several online dating sites and begins dating men she meets—many, many men. These relationships all lack something. She realizes she has no friends outside of her marriage. And she has no close female friends.  So she joins a couple of clubs—a book club, a writing club, and a hiking club.  But something is still missing.

After closing her profiles on the dating sites, she meets Max.  She is very hopeful for this relationship but, alas, it is not to be.  Max turns out to be an abuser—just verbal but she knows the odds of escalation.  After two years, tired of making excuses for him with her friends, she ends the relationship.  She has some problems getting him to accept this and the police are called several times.

By this time, Debbie has made some single female friends who are willing to support her and can help her through this.  Debbie has realized some things about herself and ventures on—trying to build a new life for herself.

This is an in-depth look at the challenges facing a middle-aged woman as she looks to rebuild her life outside of her marriage and find new love.  Debbie’s real problem is that she really did not know how to grieve.  She was angry at George for dying and for not telling her how serious his illness was.  She was angry at herself for not being kinder to George when she was tired and frustrated.  And she was angry at herself for letting her relationship with George become so all-consuming.  She had to learn to forgive George and herself.  Debbie is becoming stronger every day as she works through these issues.

Debbie Weiss earned her M.F.A. in creative nonfiction in 2020.  This is her first book.  She turned to writing after her husband of more than three decades died of cancer in 2013.  Her essays have been published in a number of national magazines.  She lives in Benicia, California

Available As Is  published by She Writes Press and available in bookstores and at Amazon.com.