Joe Manganiello’s debut memoir, Bloodlines, is set to detail his seven-year battle with a previous undisclosed illness.
“It was the most brutally difficult time of my life, one I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, but also my greatest adventure,” Manganiello, 49, told People on Tuesday, June 23. “I hope that what I went through on this journey can give readers hope that answers and healing may lie for them on the other side of whatever they are fighting through.”
The True Blood star noted that the book gave him “the gift of perspective” which allowed him to see “my suffering was a cocoon from which I would emerge forever changed.”
The book, set to be released on October 13, is described as a “gripping memoir” detailing Manganiello’s “multiple near-death experiences and medical crises.”
The ordeal “led him beyond medicine and into a remarkable, globe-spanning quest that revealed answers about his ancestry, inherited trauma, and the deeper histories we carry,” per the book’s official description.
According to publisher Simon & Schuster, Manganiello’s “body began to fail him” without any warning. The actor experienced “a cascade of autoimmune-related illnesses,” which led to a years-long battle in which he experienced chronic pain.
Throughout “a prolonged fight for survival,” doctors had “few answers and no clear explanation.” The book description reveals that Manganiello had “a life-saving organ amputation” throughout his health battle. However, further details were not disclosed.
After attempting traditional medical practices, Manganiello eventually went on a more “unorthodox path,” seeking help from shamans, pagan rituals, ancient myths and long lost family records, which led to the “rebirth of his own spirituality.”
The Magic Mike alum’s search “led him deep into his own bloodline: to a survivor of the Armenian genocide, to ancestors shaped by violence and displacement, and the hidden patterns shared by others living with chronic illness,” the description continues.
Bloodlines is “more than a memoir of a medical crisis,” the synopsis explained. It is a searching account of what happens when the life you have constructed can no longer contain the truth of what you carry.”
Manganiello will explore “illness, inheritance, masculinity, faith, ambition, and the identities we build to endure,” in the book.
“Bloodlines considers how the past lives on in the body and in the stories we tell about strength, survival, and selfhood,” the synopsis concluded. “The result is both a page-turning, heart-pounding story for the ages and an essential meditation on inheritance, loss, and the work of living with what remains.”
Bloodlines is set to be released on Tuesday, October 13.
