If one were to ignore their health problems and twisted sense of humor, the Garvey family might look like any other family. Their home was filled with laughter, anger, passion, tension, joy, and frustration, but mostly, profound love. They were happy and life was good – until the day it wasn’t.

 

Muddy Thursday is the true story of a young boy growing up in a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota in the 1990s. Ray Garvey lives as if he doesn’t have cystic fibrosis (CF), a life-threatening genetic disease. At school, Ray is the boy every kid wants to sit by because he is entertaining – the class clown. At home, Ray is the ring-leader of the neighborhood and a role model to his younger sister Martha, who also has cystic fibrosis.    

 

Ray’s mother is an elementary school teacher, his father a K9 police officer. Both parents have a curious past and their early experiences – the good ones and the bad ones –play a role in how they raise two children living with cystic fibrosis. Yet nothing could prepare them for the sudden, unexplained death of their twelve-year-old son.

 

Following Ray’s death, his little sister is left to forge ahead without her only sibling and best friend. Martha bravely faces every milestone and CF complication without her sidekick. Ray’s father tries to cope with the loss of his son by immersing himself in his work, but his mother leaves her teaching position and retreats inside her home – inside her head – by circumstance and choice. Not until her own mortality comes into question, after a breast cancer diagnosis, does she ask herself this. “Who am I to squander the life I was given, no matter its challenges?”

 

Muddy Thursday is a beautiful, heartwarming story that will inspire readers to embrace life wholeheartedly, even in the face of adversity.

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