Susan Luucci on losing husband Helmut Huber after 52 years and 'looking for joy'

Susan Lucci tells PEOPLE she was 'completely lost' after the 2022 death of her husband of 52 years, Helmut Huber, who died at 84 one month after suffering a stroke. Lucci, 79, played Erica Kane on All My Children from the soap's debut in 1970 until 2011. In her new book La Lucci, Lucci writes that 'The minute I fell in love like I did with my husband, I knew how vulnerable I was.' She says she felt 'completely lost' and isolated after his death and was grateful for the people who stood by her.

She also describes feeling 'like half a person' and unsure she would ever perform again. Lucci says the process of writing began 'in the middle of the night' with a pen and paper by her bedside; many of the words for La Lucci came to her in her sleep. The book is the follow-up to her 2011 memoir All My Life: A Memoir and will be released by Blackstone Publishing on Feb.

3; it is available for preorder. PEOPLE runs the cover story in its Feb. 9 issue. She married Austrian-born TV producer Helmut Huber in 1969 after eight months of dating and they had two children, daughter Liza, 50, and son Andreas, 45. Lucci writes adoringly of Huber as a 'classically trained chef' who called her 'Susie,' loved to drive fast, ski and golf, and cooked European comfort food.

Asked what she misses most, she said, 'Everything.

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