Actor Eric Dane’s upcoming memoir, My Book of Days: A Memoir in Moments, gives his daughters a lasting account of their father’s life, from his struggles with addiction to the family moments he treasured while living with ALS.
“Don’t wait until you get the worst possible news before you decide to become your best possible person,” the late actor advised in an authorized excerpt published by The Sunday Paper on Oct. 17.
The book arrives Nov. 3 through The Open Field, according to Penguin Random House’s official listing. Rather than tell his story only as a march through Hollywood milestones, Dane organized it around individual days that shaped him, including days he knew he would not live to share with his daughters.
That structure makes room for the public story and the private one. The publisher describes reflections on his early acting years, sobriety and diagnosis, alongside passages addressed to his daughters about their future.
For actress Rebecca Gayheart, who shares daughters Billie and Georgia with Dane, the value is personal. In PEOPLE’s new interview, she said he initially hesitated to write about his addiction, but she was grateful that the book would help their girls know their father as a person.
That is a different inheritance from a collection of television roles. The memoir gives his children his own account of experiences they cannot recover simply by watching him on a screen.
Related: FAMOUS LAST WORDS: ERIC DANE
At the start of the published excerpt, Dane described the daily message he dictated to Georgia while his nurse held his phone: “Good morning, I love you.”
The details around those five words are difficult: He could no longer reach the phone himself or turn his neck to see it on the nightstand. Still, the morning began with a father making sure his daughter heard that he loved her.
Gayheart’s account offers another view of that same determination. Sushi lunches, movies, favorite music on vinyl and game nights became ways for Dane and his family to spend time together as his illness progressed.
“We tried to be present through all of our fear and frustration and uncertainty,” Gayheart told PEOPLE.
She also described the experience as exhausting and heartbreaking, while remembering the strength he showed their daughters. Those ordinary activities did not erase what the family faced; they gave them something to share in the middle of it.
Dane died Feb. 19 at 53, his family confirmed to TODAY. Although he and Gayheart had separated, she requested dismissal of her divorce petition in March 2025, and they remained a family through his illness.
His concern also reached beyond his own home. In its statement remembering Dane, the advocacy organization I AM ALS recalled working alongside him in the halls of Congress to press for research funding and action for people facing the disease.
The published memoir excerpt does not present an uncomplicated victory over suffering. It includes strong language and candid frustration, even as Dane explains his decision to keep engaging with the life and people in front of him.
For his daughters, the coming book preserves more than the actor audiences knew from GREY’S ANATOMY and EUPHORIA. It leaves them their father’s words about his mistakes, his resilience and the everyday love he kept finding ways to express.
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