Delaware native Denise Brown has always enjoyed writing, but becoming a published author has been a bittersweet journey for the 47-year-old.

Although she's glad that her memoir, "The Unspeakable," is available to readers, she would've preferred that there had never been a need to write it.

That's because her memoir, released last month by the University of Delaware Press, is about the minutes, hours, days and years following the violent death of her husband, Otho R. "Ott" Brown in 1998.

He was gunned down, along with three co-workers, by a disgruntled employee at the Connecticut Lottery headquarters, where he served as president.

"The Unspeakable" is based on a journal Mrs. Brown kept following her husband's death.

"My hope for the book is to tell what it means to lose someone through violence, in the hope that it might do some small good in the world," she said.

Mrs. Brown's late husband, a Bear native and University of Delaware graduate, had previously served as director of the Delaware Lottery.

She met him while working for the state and they married in 1986.

They had a son and twin girls, who were 10 and 8, respectively, at the time of the shooting.

After unexpectedly finding herself a widowed mother in March 1998, Mrs. Brown poured her grief into a journal.

"I suppose it was therapeutic, though I didn't see it that way at the time," she said. "I needed an outlet."

Her journal became a place to document the nightmares, struggles and pain she encountered after her sudden loss.

A selection of her writing was initially published in a literary magazine, and later evolved into "The Unspeakable."