Publication Date: April 29, 2025
An inspiring story of love, loss and recovery
In the spirit of Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking and Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air comes Carrying the Tiger, a life affirming memoir about the full circle of life and death.
When Tony Stewart’s wife, Lynn, receives a sudden and devastating diagnosis, they scramble to find effective treatment, navigate life threatening setbacks, learn to live fully in the shadow of death, and share the intimate grace of her departure from this world. Then Tony slowly climbs out of shattering grief and, surprisingly, eases toward new love.
There is uncertainty, fear, and sorrow, but also tenderness and joy, along with a renewed perspective on what it means to live and love with one’s whole heart.
For many people, grief is an isolating emotion. It is something that is often navigated blindly.
However, Tony Stewart shares his memoir, Carrying the Tiger, which details the loss of his wife. Though marked with sadness, it also serves as a testament of healing.
Using entries originally posted in an online journal open to friends and family, he recounts Lynn’s cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment. First diagnosed in 2014, Lynn fought back until an aggressive resurgence in 2020.
Through it all, Tony uses a first-person perspective, coupled with the journal entries and responses to those posts from friends. It is painful to read about Lynn’s decline since I witnessed a loved one die from cancer, but there are poignant truths embedded within the pain.
It’s also encouraging to learn about his path through grief toward a second chance at happiness. Lynn’s legacy continues to live through the memories of those who knew her.
Carrying the Tiger delivers a gut-wrenching tale of love and loss, while also inspiring others.
Tony Stewart has made award-winning films for colleges and universities, written software that received rave reviews in The New York Times and the New York Daily News, designed a grants-management application that was used by three of the five largest charities in the world, and led the development of an international standard for the messages involved in buying and selling advertisements, for which he spoke at conferences across Europe and North America. Tony and his late wife Lynn Kotula, a painter, traveled extensively in India and Southeast Asia, staying in small hotels off the beaten track and eating delicious food with their fingers when cutlery wasn’t available. Carrying the Tiger is his first published book.
