Shelley Anne Crawford grew up on a South African farm where the map ran out. In Chapter 3 of her memoir My 3 Husbands: A True Story, she goes back to the childhood that taught her to read a silence.

In this third episode of the My 3 Husbands Book Cast, Shelley reads Chapter 3, "The Edge of the Fireline," and then sits down with her editor, Dr. Kent Gustavson, to talk about what she just read.

The farm sat in the dry hills outside the Valley of a Thousand Hills. At six she was left in charge of her grandmother, who waved her off with a cigarette and a drink four evenings running, then told Shelley's mother that Shelley had not fed her. Her brother Peter was six years older and born on the same day, with the body of a man and the mind of a child. When the local boys threw stones at him, she threw them back.

Because the real world did not protect her, she built another one. By seven she had a riding school with no horses and no clients, a clearing for a paddock and lesson plans she kept in her head. When things came too close she became a librarian instead, lining her dolls up in neat rows and stamping imaginary books. She tells Kent she still uses both, in her head and out with her horses.

Dr. Kent tells her this short chapter lays the canvas for the whole book. Tune in to hear why a childhood that reads as extraordinary now felt normal at the time, and why Kent calls the last line one of the best cliffhangers he has read.

This chapter describes rural violence and a death by suicide. Please take care while listening.

Chapters:
📖 00:04 Shelley Anne Crawford introduces chapter three, and a note before listening

🔥 01:20 Learning at four to notice the stillness before danger

🪨 02:09 Peter, born on the same day, and the stones she threw back

🍽️ 03:07 Six years old, in charge of a grandmother who would not eat

🐎 04:45 A riding school with no horses and a library in her head

🖋️ 06:39 Roy Campbell's The Zulu Girl, and why all of it felt normal

💡 10:16 Where her resilience work actually started, and why she still uses it

🎨 14:19 A short chapter that lays the canvas for the whole book

🪝 15:59 The cliffhanger she did not know she was writing

Links

Connect with Shelley:
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/shelleyannecrawford2026
Substack: shelleyannecrawford.substack.com
Website: www.jessglobal.org

In this second episode of the My 3 Husbands Book Cast, Shelley reads Chapter 2, "The Crack in the Glass," and then sits down with her editor, Dr. Kent Gustavson, to talk about what she just read.

She opens by saying that what follows is not a record. The names are pseudonyms and the scene is her reconstruction, built from what she knew of him and what others pieced together. A wooden panel pulled off a bathroom wall, nothing behind it. His life savings gone, the money meant to get him from South Africa to his children in London. He collects his guns and drives to a coffee shop, where a fourteen-year-old girl steps between the barrel and her mother.

Kent starts at the end, at the koppie above the sea where he was found. That spot, Shelley says, is the only part of the chapter she knows to be true. She has stood there. They talk about the line "the whole sky coming down," and what sits against it, the pistol he once taught her to strip and rebuild in the dark until she could do it without looking. Money was how he controlled her, and someone had just taken his.

Tune in to hear why Shelley put a child in that scene, and what Kent says about the power a fourteen-year-old had, whether she knew it or not.

This episode describes domestic violence and suicide. Please take care while listening.

Chatpers:
✍️ 00:04 Shelley Anne Crawford on why this chapter is imagination, not a record

🧱 01:16 The money gone from behind the wall, and what it was for

💔 05:33 The birthday call three weeks before, and the woman he had ruined

🪟 06:41 A barrel on the kitchen glass, and the fourteen-year-old who stepped in

⛰️ 09:12 The koppie above the sea, the only part she knows is true

☁️ 11:56 The whole sky coming down, and the intimacy of the next line

🪙 15:51 Money was the mechanism of control, and then somebody took his

🧒 19:29 Why a child was the only thing that could lower the gun

Connect with Shelley:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shelleyannecrawford2026/
Substack: https://shelleyannecrawford.substack.com/
Website: www.jessglobal.org

Sudden loss splits a life into a before and an after. Shelley Anne Crawford's memoir My 3 Husbands: A True Story opens on the Monday afternoon the phone rang twice.

In this first episode of the My 3 Husbands Audiobook Podcast, Shelley reads Chapter 1, "Tied Together," and then sits down with her editor, Dr. Kent Gustavson, to talk about what she just read.

The chapter finds her in the art room of her country house in Ireland, children painting around her, cookies cooling in the kitchen. She had built that life out of the wreckage of an earlier one, in a village far enough away that it felt like a place no pain could reach. The phone rings and she lets it go. She never answers on the first go. A minute later it rings again, and it is her daughter Jessica, calling from London.

Kent reads the chapter back to her through its senses, the ringing, the silence, the sound of the ocean in her ears though she lives miles from the sea. Shelley talks about the tsunami dreams she has had for years, and about why the only word she could reach for was "gone." Then she says something harder. There were times she had wished he would go missing, or get hurt.

Tune in to hear why Shelley believes there is beauty even here, and why, as she puts it, it is not like someone dies and then everything goes black.

This episode refers to sudden death and suicide. Please take care while listening.

Chapters:
📖 00:04 Shelley Anne Crawford introduces the memoir and a note before listening

🖌️ 00:50 The art room in Ireland, and a life rebuilt out of wreckage

📞 01:52 The phone rings twice, and the only word left is gone

🐚 03:04 The ocean in her ears, and years of tsunami dreams

🤲 06:49 The smell of oil paint, and the forgiveness running through the book

🪞 11:19 Admitting she once wished he would go missing, or get hurt

🌅 13:00 Why everything does not go black when someone dies

Connect with Shelley:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shelleyannecrawford2026/
Substack: https://shelleyannecrawford.substack.com/
Website: www.jessglobal.org