Our culture doesn't do happily-ever-after very well. According to current statistics, nearly half the marriages in this country end in divorce. Long-term marital love is apparently becoming a rare thing, yet it is possible. When Dr. Helen Fisher scanned the brains of seventeen long-married women and men who claimed to still be deeply in love with their spouses, the regions associated with intense, early stage romantic love were just as active as those of newlyweds. But I didn't need science to convince me of this. My marriage was living proof. "How do you two do it?" friends would ask my wife Dolly. "After all these years Paul still looks at you like he's just fallen in love yesterday. "We'd met young and married early, not the ideal scenario for a successful long-term marriage. And yet, for us, the music never stopped playing, not when separated by service during the Vietnam War, nor through struggles with finances, career, a stillborn child, and a debilitating bout with acute anxiety disorder. Like all great love stories, through it all we remained deeply in love and committed to each other. Even as we aged Dolly remained for me the same beautiful angel I'd met in 1959. As we approached our fiftieth wedding anniversary, suddenly, and with little warning, death took Dolly, ending our fifty-five-year love affair and with it, my desire to go on living. To survive and continue without her was the greatest challenge I would ever face. Love and Stardust is the true story of two people whose love for each other was exceptional, never wavering during a lifetime together. The proof of this is on every page.