Kadian Journal ─ A Father's Memoir

"Heartbreaking...Profoundly moving...A tender tribute.”—The Daily Mail (London)

"Harding's remarkable memoir is written with transparent emotional intelligence. It makes one understand how it was for a father to lose a boy unique in his eyes and loved by everyone who knew him: Kadian."—The Observer (London)

In July 2012, Thomas Harding’s fourteen-year-old son Kadian was killed in a bicycle accident. Shortly afterwards Thomas began to write. This book is the result.

Beginning on the day of Kadian’s death, and continuing to the one-year anniversary, and beyond, Kadian Journal is a record of grief in its rawest form, and of a mind in shock and questioning a strange new reality. Interspersed within the journal are fragments of memory: jewel-bright everyday moments that slowly combine to form a biography of a lost son, and a lost life.

Kadian Journal is a document of startling bravery and candour—a description of a family dislocated and united by tragedy, and a beautiful and moving tribute to a son.

"Heartbreaking...For a man in such raw, intense pain, Harding writes with incredible precision....Kadian Harding’s fourteen years shine brilliantly from its pages....Thomas Harding has been generous in sharing his boy with me, and I am grateful he found words.”—The Daily Telegraph (London)

"This book is raw and heartbreaking but it is never intrusive or gratuitous. The writing is real and spare, the love so very deep that the reader can scarcely look away....A beautiful tribute.”—Sunday Express (London)