Enlarge "Cuddle Bear" and "Newsie": Andi Parhamovich and Michael Hastings in New York in June 2006. WASHINGTON  Michael Hastings has packed quite a bit into his 28 years. Drugs. Alcohol. Rehab. War. Love. Death. It's the death part that Hastings, a correspondent for Newsweek, didn't count on quite so early. His fiancée, Andi Parhamovich, a feisty, opinionated and idealistic 28-year-old aid worker in Iraq, was killed Jan. 17, 2007, in a car bombing. Hastings was there covering the war. He tells their story in his new book, I Lost My Love in Baghdad: A Modern War Story (Scribner, $24). Promoting such a tale was the last thing he expected to be doing this spring. Hastings says he kept a journal but never intended to write a non-fiction book about Iraq. "I didn't have anything to say about it," says Hastings, who is now covering the presidential primaries for Newsweek. That changed the day Parhamovich, an American from Ohio, was killed while attending a meeting at the Iraqi Islamic Party headquarters. "When that happened, I had a lot to say," Hastings says. "I felt here's my chance to write a final love letter to Andi." And so he did, taking a leave from work and spending two months in the winter of 2007, right after her death, chain-smoking Parliament Lights while writing in his parents' attic in Burlington, Vt. He says he did it "to survive. It never was a real choice." Hastings had no book deal, no agent, no plan of action. But that soon changed when he started circulating his manuscript. "I had such a positive response," he says, a reaction that made him feel more comfortable about writing such an "intensely personal story about a relationship in such an extreme setting." Hastings and Parhamovich met in 2005 in New York while he was working at the magazine and she was a publicist for Air America Radio. They had a whirlwind, roller-coaster romance that included romantic rendezvous in European capitals. Then, after a year together, they found themselves in Baghdad when Parhamovich took a job with the National Democratic Institute, an organization that works to develop democratic practices around the world. They met when they could, often at the Blue Star, a restaurant in the Green Zone. Their romance blossomed. She called him "Newsie," making fun of the fact he always had a reporter's notebook in his back pocket, as he did during a recent interview in a park in Washington, D.C. He called her "Cuddle Bear" in their e-mails. Mark Miller, Newsweek's assistant managing editor and chief of correspondents, concedes that he was "a bit taken aback" when he first heard of the Hastings' book proposal. "But Mike has walked the line between the very personal and a powerful story," Miller says. "He has a keen eye for the telling details and a firm command of reporting the issues," Miller says. "It's a brave but controversial book. Some might feel uncomfortable with it." Hastings understands that some might feel he was taking advantage of his lover's death. "The risk of being criticized for doing so was nothing compared to not doing anything," he says. But when he held his book in his hands for the first time, he just stared at it. "It wasn't bittersweet. It was mostly bitter," he says. "But do you curl up in a ball, or do you move forward? At the end of the day, I was lucky to have found someone to love me as much as she did. 'Lucky' sounds funny, I guess, but that's the way I feel." Hastings realizes his life is still filled with lots of "what ifs." What if he hadn't been in Iraq? What if Andi had not gone there? "But if she hadn't gone, she wouldn't have been Andi," he says. "Does it haunt me? Will it always? It's like when anyone has a tragic death. We all ask questions, the should-haves …" He's well aware he's on a journey, one that has taken him from drug abuse in college, then to rehab, back to college and finally to his high-profile job. "As much as anyone possibly can, I get life," says Hastings, who has not dated anyone since Andi's death. "My struggle now is not to be bitter. How many times can you get knocked down and get up again? Andi would want me to keep going. "But I'm still pretty much messed up. It's one day at a time." Enlarge By H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY Hastings: The author says the risk of being accused of taking advantage of his fiancée's death "was nothing compared to not doing anything." Conversation guidelines: USA TODAY welcomes your thoughts, stories and information related to this article. Please stay on topic and be respectful of others. Keep the conversation appropriate for interested readers across the map.