Eric Dane will continue to speak in his own words long after his death, with his posthumous memoir due out later this year, a book he was keen to complete after being diagnosed with ALS in 2023.
Penguin Random House announced Thursday that My book of days: a memoir in a few moments will be released on November 3 under Maria Shriver’s imprint, The Open Field.
Dane died on February 19 at the age of 53, after a ten-month battle with the neurodegenerative disease.
The editor confirmed that he “worked on the manuscript to the end” and that publishing it as planned would allow him to “continue to speak, with his own voice, with the clarity and courage that define him.”
Shriver, 70, said she felt honored to have been chosen for the project.
“He told me he wanted his family to know how much he loved them and wanted to leave them a story they could be proud of,” she said.
In his own words, recorded before his death, Dane explained simply and powerfully why he continued to write.
“I wake up every morning and I immediately remember that this illness, this challenge, is real, and that’s exactly why I’m writing this book,” he said.
“I want to capture the moments that shaped me, the good days, the hard days, the ones I never took for granted, so that, at least, people who read it remember what it means to live with heart. If sharing this helps someone find meaning in their own days, then my story is worth telling.”
The memoir covers the full arc of his life, from his early years roaming Hollywood and finding his place in sobriety, to the profound shift in perspective that accompanied his diagnosis.
As he says, “Our days are all we really have.”
Much of the book is written with her two daughters, Billie, 15, and Georgia, 14, in mind.
The girls’ mother, actress Rebecca Gayheart, supported Dane throughout his illness.
The couple had married in 2004 before Gayheart filed for divorce in 2018, but she called it quits last March, explaining that she wanted to show their daughters how to introduce themselves to family “when times are at their worst,” while noting that she and Dane hadn’t lived together in eight years.
