PROVIDENCE, R.I. - s4story -- PROVIDENCE, RI — Alison Storry was seven years old when a neighbor approached her in a garden in Sunninghill, England, and delivered four words that would divide her life into before and after:

"He has died."

Her father, Major David Anthony Storry, had been killed during his final tour of duty in Northern Ireland.

In her new memoir, Fatherless, Storry examines what happens after the moment everyone else thinks of as the tragedy.

Because losing a parent doesn't happen only once.

A child can spend a lifetime losing them.

For Storry, her father's death became an invisible thread running through childhood, boarding school, relationships, motherhood, heartbreak and the choices she made as an adult.

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At eight, she was sent to boarding school. She cried at night and clung to a photograph of her father until a nun confiscated it. As she grew older, grief did not disappear. It changed shape.

Fatherless follows Storry through decades of trying to outrun, understand and eventually face the loss that had shaped her since childhood.

Then, decades after her father's murder, the past came looking for her.

A criminal investigation uncovered new information about her father's death. Investigators told Storry that evidence pointed toward a seventeen-year-old IRA member as possibly being involved, although they could not establish it definitively.

For years, Storry had imagined the person responsible as a hardened terrorist.

She had never imagined a boy.

That revelation forces her to confront a far more complicated question:

Can we understand the person who caused our deepest pain without excusing what they did?

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The question becomes even more profound when Storry's adult daughter suddenly loses her father.

Now mother and daughter share a word neither wanted:

Fatherless.

Yet Fatherless is not simply a memoir about death. It is about what we carry after loss, the stories we build around our wounds, and whether healing requires us to finally face what we have spent years trying to escape.

About Alison Storry

Alison Storry is the author of Fatherless, a deeply personal memoir exploring childhood loss, unresolved trauma, relationships, motherhood, grief and the complicated journey toward forgiveness and self-understanding.

About Fatherless

Fatherless: A Memoir is published by Thought Leader Academy.

Books are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other retailers.