The first time I met with Gail after Larry died, I asked her the obvious question: How was she doing? With trademark Miller candor and tears, she said, "I don't want to sound cold. I've been waiting for him my whole life. It's not that different now." She began to cry as she added, "The only time we were really together was when he got sick and could no longer go to work."

After reading the manuscript for this book, my friend and fellow columnist Lee Benson made an astute observation: "Really this is a love story. That's the thread that runs through the book. Larry had a lifeline in Gail, and they lived this whole thing together. It's about two people who started out with nothing, and it ends with her sitting in that house that he let her build and she's overseeing their empire. It was quite a ride."

Gail was the calm in the middle of Larry's storm. He was intense, driven and creative, and she was serene, wise and patient. His admiration and love for Gail seemed to come up in so many of our conversations. They met in junior high; she was pretty much the only girl he ever dated. They certainly had their ups and downs — life with a man of Larry's artistic temperament was never easy — but as Gail writes in the book's epilogue: "I have often said I am grateful that there was never an occasion when we both wanted a divorce at the same time."