MEMOIR
ALL OF IT, FOREVER
Growing Up with My Bipolar Father
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What do you do when the person you love most is also the person you fear most?
In this unflinching and deeply moving memoir, Scott Murray takes readers on an extraordinary journey through a childhood defined by his father's bipolar disorder—where a trip to the grocery store could become an FBI conspiracy, where winning meant everything and losing meant catastrophe, and where love was measured not in stability but in showing up, again and again, no matter how hard things got.
Jim Murray was larger than life: a championship wrestling coach who bought horses on a whim and transported them on flatbed trailers, a landscaper who once threw a chair through a bank window, a father who woke his children at 3 AM convinced he was Jesus Christ. He was brilliant and terrifying, generous and unpredictable, a man whose mania could transform an ordinary Saturday into either an unforgettable adventure or a family crisis.
With raw honesty and unexpected humor, Scott weaves together stories that will leave you breathless—from being accidentally pepper-sprayed by police while chasing his manic father down Interstate 70, to watching his nine-year-old sister throw herself between their parents to stop violence, to celebrating wrestling championships while secretly managing psychiatric emergencies.
"We were never a normal family. Normal families didn't own chariots. Normal families didn't turn routine trips downtown into historical reenactments gone wrong. But despite the public humiliation and my love for blending into the background, there was something special about those wild, unpredictable rides with Dad."
This Isn't Just Another Mental Health Memoir
It's a Love Story
This is a love letter to the complicated truth that families dealing with mental illness know all too well: that you can be traumatized and grateful, terrified and devoted, broken and whole—all at the same time.
It's About Survival
It's about three siblings who learned to find laughter in chaos, a mother who held everything together when it should have fallen apart, and a father whose love burned so bright it sometimes scorched everyone it touched.
It's Darkly Funny
Murray's prose crackles with life, mixing heart-stopping scenes of crisis with moments of absurd comedy—because sometimes the only way to survive the unthinkable is to find something to laugh about.
It's Fiercely Honest
This book explores the questions that haunt every family touched by mental illness: How do you love someone whose brain is trying to destroy them? How do you protect yourself while refusing to abandon them?
Stories That Will Stay With You
The Chariot
A twenty-dollar chariot that nearly killed my brother but gave us a story for the ages
Wrestling Champions
How we became national champions while managing family chaos
Horses on a Flatbed
Transportation methods that shouldn't work but somehow did
3 AM Revelations
When Dad thought he was Jesus and we had to decide what to do
Tiny Warriors
A nine-year-old sister who became our family's fiercest protector
Impossible Love
Choosing to stay when leaving would have been easier
Early Praise
"Murray writes with the precision of a surgeon and the heart of a poet. This is the rare memoir that captures both the terror and tenderness of loving someone with mental illness.""
— Early reader review
"THIS IS NOT A VICTIM'S TALE. IT'S A LOVE STORY."
— Early reader review
"If you've ever tried to make sense of someone who defied logic, broke your heart, and made you laugh in the same breath, this book will find you."
— Early reader review
"A stunning debut that will break your heart, make you laugh through tears, and leave you believing in the extraordinary resilience of ordinary families."
— Early reader review
For Readers Who Loved
Educated
by Tara Westover
The Glass Castle
by Jeannette Walls
Running with Scissors
by Augusten Burroughs
This memoir offers a fresh, deeply Midwestern voice to the conversation about family, mental illness, and the terrible, beautiful ways we learn to love each other through impossible circumstances.
The Ultimate Message
This is a story about choosing love—not the easy kind that comes with guarantees and safety nets, but the fierce, complicated, sometimes dangerous kind that says:
"Yes. All of it. Forever."
About Scott Murray
Scott Murray grew up in Colby, Kansas, the oldest of three children in a family where normal was never an option. His childhood was shaped by his father's bipolar disorder, his mother's fierce determination, and the kind of love that survives even when it probably shouldn't.
A graduate of Colby Community College, Scott spent 18 years as a senior network engineer before finally sitting down to finish writing the stories that had been chasing him his whole life. He still can't look at a chariot without laughing.
ALL OF IT, FOREVER is his first book. He's currently working on his second memoir about what happens after forever ends.
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