(NewsUSA) - Can an ordinary life be extraordinary? It depends on the lens through which one views it. In the case of Marc Gellman, that lens is Shiva Eyes and the life is the one he describes in his powerful and unforgettable memoir, Seven Days of SHIVA.

This love story is a full portrait of a marriage that will make you smile, laugh, and cry. Looking through a husband’s Shiva Eyes, readers will experience the couple’s wondrous life as he searches deep into his soul to find the answer: Can a forty-year marriage still have been magical, romantic, and filled with life, even with a thirty-year struggle with breast cancer?

Don’t let the title mislead you . . . The story is a romantic celebration of life and the next romantic love story – a New York City tale about a boy from Brooklyn and a girl from The Bronx.

Seized with grief at the loss of his beloved and vibrant wife Barbara, Marc does the only thing he finds he can do: He starts telling stories. This unique memoir is much more than a tribute to a departed love. Their story shows how a cancer journey seamlessly entwines through a four-decades-long love story.

Surrounded by family and friends for seven days of sitting Shiva, Marc recounts his fairytale love story, from their teenage meeting in the 1960s Rockaway summer scene, to being early marrieds in New York City, to suburban parenting, and to life as an urban couple relishing their empty nest. Once it appears, Barbara's courageous, grueling, determined, hope-filled fight against a brutal disease is unflinchingly depicted.

With candor and humor, laughter and tears, the author shares the tales of a life both wildly charmed and excruciatingly challenging. Theirs is a life of parties and singing and celebration, and a life of hard work raising three lively children while managing two demanding careers. It’s a life of playful adventures and hijinks, of making the most of every silly moment in even the most serious of times. A life of standing up to every challenge together and dancing close whenever they can.

Observing the singular, remarkable romance of Marc and Barbara through Shiva Eyes, the author uncovers a depth to their love he’d never fully grasped, and a strength in his wife that he’d never fully understood. And about everything that the cancer couldn’t touch: their nonstop silliness and playful puppy love that endured through the hills and valleys of their life together. Entwined into their marriage, cancer took a place in their love story without overtaking it.

Don’t be surprised if you see some of yourselves in the characters and their journey. Come along to discover a happy-ever-after born of laughter, devotion, faith, and above all, a teenage puppy love that only grew with each passing year.

Learn more at marcgellman.com and purchase at https://bit.ly/4cfY1RG.