Gloucester resident Larry McKinney will release his first book, “Ashley’s Bow: A Story of Ashley Chapman,” on Sunday, through his own imprint, Fly Straight Press. It is the story of McKinney’s stepdaughter, Ashley Chapman, who died in 2023 at the age of 25 when a tractor-trailer hit her car while she was stopped at a red light on Route 17 in Gloucester. It tells of the connection that grew between McKinney and Ashley from the time she was four years old. He married her mother, Sheila, but he never tried to replace her dad, Jeff. He and Ashley became best friends instead. It was that friendship and the loss of his stepdaughter at such a young age that prompted McKinney to write this book. He said that, in the wake of her death, he felt he had to be strong for his wife and set aside his own grief. The book was “a way to get a lot of it out,” he said. The book tells of Ashley’s love of horses, cowboy boots, cats and kittens; the time she rescued a Tennessee Walker she renamed Blackie; of ...