BE A MAN, THINK LIKE SHE DO: A NOVEL
Derrick Cole has spent most of his life believing he knows what it means to be a good man.
Provide. Protect. Work hard. Handle problems. Keep the family together.
At fifty-five, Derrick has done all of that. But when his wife, Maya, reveals that she has been quietly writing a children’s book for twelve years, Derrick is stunned.
He doesn’t remember her telling him.
Maya does.
That discovery exposes a deeper truth inside their thirty-year marriage: Derrick has spent years providing for the woman he loves without always knowing how to hear her.
Then life begins taking away the things Derrick has used to define himself.
His father receives a frightening diagnosis. A long-buried family truth changes what Derrick believed about his mother. His career disappears. Maya begins reclaiming dreams of her own. And when Derrick’s carefully constructed identity begins to collapse, he is forced to confront a question he has avoided his entire life:
Who am I when nobody needs me to fix anything?
What follows is not simply a story about a troubled marriage. It is a story about two people learning one another again.
As Maya finds her voice, Derrick discovers that listening to his wife does not require losing himself. Through family, friendship, counseling, forgiveness, vulnerability, and an unexpected circle of men trying to become better husbands, fathers, sons, and human beings, Derrick begins redefining what strength actually means.
And he eventually discovers the meaning behind four words:
Be a man. Think like she do.
Not because all women think alike.
They don’t.
Because loving the woman beside you means being willing to stop assuming, ask questions, listen to the answers, and learn who she actually is.
BE A MAN, THINK LIKE SHE DO is an emotionally grounded contemporary relationship novel about marriage, masculinity, communication, mental health, family wounds, second chances, and the courage it takes to change after fifty.
Sometimes love isn’t about already knowing.
Sometimes love is knowing enough to ask.
Written by E. L. Pryor
Created by Eddie Pryor Jr.
A Pryor Legacy Production