Layton Reid was a globe-trotting, risk-taking, sunshine-addicted bachelor — then came a melanoma diagnosis. Cancer startled him out of his arrested development. He returned home to Halifax to work as a wedding photographer and remission launched him into a new, passionate life as a husband and father-to-be. When the melanoma returned, now at Stage IV, Layton and his family put all their stock into a punishing alternative therapy, hoping for a cure. This Is Not the End of Me recounts Layton's three-year journey as he tried desperately to stay alive for his young son, Finn, and then found purpose in preparing Finn for a world without him.

With incredible intimacy, grit and empathy, reporter Dakshana Bascaramurty casts an unsentimental eye on who her good friend was: his effervescence, his twisted wit, his anger, his vulnerability. Interweaving Layton's own reflections — his diaries written for Finn, his letters to his wife, Candace, and his public journal — she paints a keenly observed portrait of Layton's remarkable evolution.

Powerful and unvarnished, This is Not the End of Me is about someone who didn't get a very happy ending, but learned to squeeze as much life as possible from his final days. (From McClelland & Stewart)

Dakshana Bascaramurty is a reporter for the Globe and Mail. Her work has also appeared in the National Post, the Ottawa Citizen and on CBC. This Is Not the End of Me is her first book.