There Is No Meant to Be

There is no meant to be but the love I’ve known has made it hard to believe that.

Jarred McGinnis was born into a Southern US clan where masculinity, capability and physical violence were all closely intertwined.

He was also the victim of violence outside the family: a car crash that has left him in a wheelchair since his early 20s.

Two decades later, he is the father of two small girls, living first in East London and now in Marseille.

In this ground-breaking memoir, Jarred writes about the family that formed him, and of breaking the chain of intergenerational harm. He writes of his wife Sarah, their twin girls, and his mother Momo; of love blooming within the context of being cared for, of the wonder of becoming a parent, and of the particular experience of being a father in a body that can at times feel vulnerable.

In a daring imaginative leap, Jarred writes of the end of life too, reaching beyond his own death to look at what truly makes a life.