Looking Back

We do not leave the people we love in the past. We carry them into every version of who we become.

Mary Gagliardi's life has been anything but predictable. She has trained dogs for police work, rescued animals others had abandoned, built a career in law enforcement, chased adventure, pulled more than a few unforgettable pranks, loved fiercely, laughed uncontrollably, and somehow collected enough stories along the way to make you wonder: Did all of this really happen to one woman? It did.

Looking Back invites readers into those stories with the honesty of an old friend sitting across the table and telling you everything. Yet behind every memory is something deeper: the family that formed her, the experiences that hardened and softened her, the animals she could never stop saving, and the sister whose death left an irreplaceable space in her life. This is not a story about having a perfect life. It is about having a real one, embracing every beautiful, painful piece of it, and discovering that sometimes we look backward not because we are stuck there, but because that is where so much of what we love still lives.

At its heart, however, this is a story about love and what remains when someone we cannot imagine living without is suddenly gone. Mary's bond with her sister Susie runs like an invisible thread through the pages, transforming a lively memoir into something far more intimate: a tribute to memory itself.