If We Break A Memoir of Marriage, Addiction, and Healing

National Bestseller — Kathleen Buhle’s powerful memoir is a testament to resilience, radical honesty, and the courage it takes to reclaim your identity after loss.

This isn’t a story about villains or heroes. It’s the deeply personal account of a young woman from Chicago’s South Side who fell in love with a senator’s son and built what she believed would be an unshakeable marriage. But when addiction entered their lives, Kathleen faced an impossible choice: continue playing the role of the “good wife” or confront the painful truth she’d been hiding—from her daughters, from herself, and from the world.

If We Break is both page-turning and heartbreaking, a chronicle of how one woman learned to stop protecting everyone else and start protecting herself. Buhle writes with unflinching honesty about the compromises we make in the name of love, the lies that become insurmountable, and the moment when staying silent becomes more painful than speaking up.

People magazine calls it “dignified and revealing,” while Connie Britton praises Buhle’s “brave and honest story” that “transcends politics, division, hearsay, and judgment.” This memoir speaks directly to anyone who has lost themselves in a relationship and wondered if they could survive—and thrive—on their own terms.

A story of self-actualization that reminds us: sometimes breaking is the only way to become whole again.

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