The Minister's Husband: A Memoir of Family, Fathering, and Keeping Faith While Out at Sea

The story of a man coming into his own by coming home.


Since he was a boy, Bill Eville knew he wanted two things in life: to be a writer and a father. Being a minister's husband had not been on this list, having left the church as a teenager as soon as his parents stopped making him go each Sunday.



Eville's life changes when his wife Cathlin takes a job as the first female pastor of a 350-year-old church on Martha's Vineyard, the island that was once home to generations of his ancestors. With their two small children in tow, the couple begins a new life eight miles out at sea.



Readers follow Eville's journey from stay-at-home-dad to newspaper editor as he discovers what it means to be a writer, a father, and--after his wife's devasting breast cancer diagnosis--what it truly means to be a minister's husband. Told in a series of linked essays, this memoir is poignant and funny, filled with faith, struggle, and light.