Love. Loss. Life.

More bizarre than any fiction imagined this is a true story of huge and passionate love counteracted with achingly hell–deep loss and everything in between. In just a decade journalist Monica Nicolson Oosterbroek Hilton–Barber Zwolsman married and lost both her beloved husbands – award winning photographers Ken Oosterbroek and Steven Hilton–Barber as well as her precious 16–month–old son Benjamin. Most people would have collapsed under the weight of such tragic devastation. But Monica a survivor of note now finally tells the story of her rollercoaster ride of a life in the much anticipated memoir Love. Loss. Life. In 2004 within weeks of losing her precious baby boy and with the loss of her two husbands barely behind her Monica finally ends up in Australia desperate to obliterate the pain of death and start a new life. I was peering off the edge of the ledge of hopeless despair. I was a wife with no husband a mother without a child a 40–year–old widow with nothing but a truckload of traumatic baggage.ￂﾝ This poignantly honest tale of love loss and life brilliantly written in Monica's unique acerbic style is a story of deep passion crushing let downs new beginnings huge humour and the renewal of hope. It is also a book filled with penetrating insights into a South Africa in the '90s in political transition. It sees Monica hurtling through war–zones of Africa with the men in her life – Mosambique Zimbabwe Uganda and Egypt to Britain Europe and America – delightfully written in a travelogue style. Fundamentally Love. Loss. Life. is a survival story where fate and personal choices meet with tragic results. Despite often teetering on the brink of eternal darkness Monica learns that the power of the body's natural life force is to survive and is impossible to extinguish. She also discovers humour and female bonding to be a miraculous antidote on even the darkest of days. To my utter astonishment and the surprise of many others I am still filled with an unquenchable passion for life.ￂﾝ