Today we are talking to Marie McGaha, author of the memoir, Your Ghost: A Memoir of Love, Loss and the Echoes That Remain.
Marie McGaha is an award-winning writer whose work includes clean historical romances, Christian devotionals, and heartfelt children’s books. A storyteller at her core, she weaves faith, resilience, and gentle humor through every page she writes.
She makes her home in southeast Oklahoma, in the foothills of the Ouachita Mountains, where life is anything but quiet. Her days are shared with four spoiled dogs, a crippled rooster with more attitude than feathers, a noisy guinea who believes it runs the place, a couple of flighty hens, and a watchful roo who keeps an eye on everything that moves. This lively little farm—equal parts sanctuary and circus—provides endless inspiration, companionship, and the kind of grounding only God’s creation can offer.
Whether she’s crafting a tender love story, guiding readers through Scripture, or bringing the Bible to life for children through animal characters, Marie writes with a voice shaped by faith, loss, healing, and the stubborn hope that refuses to let go. Her work reflects the heart of a woman who has walked through fire and come out carrying stories worth telling.
You can also join her for daily devotionals on YouTube at @HeReignsChurch, where she shares encouragement, Scripture, and the steady reminder that hope is still alive. You can contact her by email: church.hereigns@gmail.com.
Marie’s latest book is Your Ghost: A Memoir of Love, Loss and the Echoes That Remain.
Visit her blog at authormariemcgaha.blogspot.com.
Connect with her on social media at:
╰┈➤ Facebook: www.facebook.com/AuthorMarieMcGaha
╰┈➤ LinkedIn: Linkedin.com/in/mariemcgaha
I've been writing stories since I learned my ABC's! I wrote my first book, a historical romance in the 8th grade. When I first decided to try and get published was in the days long before the internet, so everything was typed on a typewriter, boxed and mailed to publishers. The wait then began and sometimes there were rejection letters in the mail, sometimes they'd just return the manuscript, or sometimes I never heard anything. The internet has made being a writer much easier!
Your latest book, Your Ghost: A Memoir of Love, Loss and the Echoes That Remain, is an honest look at grief through the eyes of a woman who loved deeply, lost suddenly, and is learning to live with the echo of
loss left behind. Your book started out as a journal you were writing to God about the death of your husband. Is that right?
Yes, I had 600 pages of what I guess you could call a journal, but I call it 600 pages of insanity. Every bit of heart-crushing pain, every bit of anger, and every other emotion was there, and some it was pure insanity. Editing it into this book brought back all of those emotions and sometimes, I just had to stop and take a walk, breathe and cry. It was a purging.
Your story while very sad is also touching in so many ways. Death is something that one is ever prepared for. How did you manage?
I don't know. I didn't want to live, I didn't want to be here without my husband and I never thought I was going to make it through that first year, and almost didn't. I am still amazed that I've made it almost five years. It is the most difficult thing I've ever done.
Someone called your book, "The best book I've ever read about grief and recovery." How do you feel when you hear that?
It brings tears to my eyes. That someone else is helped by what I went through, am still going through, blesses my heart.
Can you give us a short excerpt?
I didn’t just lose my spouse, I lost our dreams, our plans, our future, and life as I know and see it ceased to exist. It is like floating, some macabre dance I don't know the steps to. A dreamworld within a nightmare. An altered reality that is like being in an alien land where I don't speak the language, don't know the customs, and hold no currency — whatever it may be. I realize I am alone, even in a crowded room or public place. And the alone is so deep, so still, like being chained to the bottom of the sea where it's absolutely beautiful but I know I don't belong and maybe I never will again because the place where I did belong no longer exists.
All the tears and all the prayers and all the silent screams from the depths of my soul are all in vain because life will never make sense again. And all that's left are memories ofwhat once was and will never be again.
But somehow, I still have to breathe.
I have to eat and to put one foot in front of the other.
I have to move forward into some unknown world that I have to find the strength for.
I have to pull out my sword and start carving a little piece of it for myself and as I work, I find the warrior within that God made me to be.
I am not the same. I am different.
My loss has left a scar on my brain, my heart, and my soul. And like all scars, when they are healed, they may be ugly, but they have a strength that makes the skin more resilient than it was before the trauma, before the wound, before I bled like never before.
And I know that somewhere out there is a better life, a better me, different than before but stronger, wiser, and determined to not let my grief and loss define me or let it be an anchor that pulls me under, but rather, I can turn it into a sail that pushes me forward.
And I live.
No matter what it looks like.
Or how difficult it is.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
So many things! I think the first things I would tell everyone is about the love of Yeshua and that nothing we go through is as difficult as we think it is when faced with the end of our lives. I'm an old woman now, and as I've aged, I've learned how ridiculous and unimportant all the things of life really are. What is important is the love of God and family. We will leave everything we've worked for behind but the love we leave behind truly lasts forever. And our relationship with God is what takes us into the hereafter. Life here ends but living for God lasts forever.
Your Ghost: A Memoir of Love, Loss and the Echoes That Remain is a searing, faith-anchored memoir of love, loss, and the long road back to oneself. When Marie’s husband dies without warning, her world fractures in an instant, leaving her to navigate the brutal, unfiltered landscape of grief. In the quiet of an empty house and the chaos of a shattered heart, she wrestles with God, memory, and the haunting presence of the man she can no longer touch but cannot let go.
Told with unflinching honesty and spiritual depth, Your Ghost traces the intimate, day-by-day unraveling and rebuilding of a woman who refuses to let tragedy define the rest of her life. As she confronts guilt, loneliness, anger, and the strange moments when his nearness feels almost tangible, Marie discovers that grief is not a straight line but a sacred, winding path. What emerges is a story not only of devastation, but of resilience—a testament to enduring love, stubborn hope, and the quiet miracles that carry us forward when we think we cannot take another step.
╰┈➤Book Details
- Genre: Memoir
- Sub-genre: Survival Biographies
- Language:English
- Pages: 105
- Hardcover: 979-8252998060
Your Ghost is available at Amazon.
