Craig Morgan endured every parent’s worst nightmare when his oldest son, Jerry, drowned on July 10, 2016, while tubing on Kentucky Lake. Jerry was 19 years old when he passed away, a loss that forever changed Morgan and his entire family, including his wife, Karen, and Jerry’s four siblings.

“I would give every bit of stardom back, everything I own, both legs and both arms to have Jerry here,” Morgan tells People. “But that ain’t the way it works.”

The loss of Jerry is one of many chapters of Morgan’s life and career that he opens up about, in his new memoir, God, Family, Country, out on September 27. In the book, Morgan recalls the heartbreaking moments when he found out his son had gone missing in the water. Jerry had been home for the weekend, and spent Friday night at the Grand Ole Opry with his father, before Morgan had to leave to lay a show.

“Sunday I was back home and at our pool, enjoying the sun with Karen,” Morgan recalls in an excerpt from the book (which was shared exclusively with People ahead of its release). “Jerry was tubing with friends on Kentucky Lake. He and I texted back and forth; I didn’t want him to go back to school without spending more time with us.”

Morgan says Jerry texted him that he was about to get out of the water, unaware that his entire world was about to be shattered.

“Not too much later, around four o’clock, I got a phone call from a friend of mine in law enforcement who told me there’d been an accident on the lake,” Morgan remembers. “Jerry had gone under, and they couldn’t find him.”

Morgan made a deal with the sheriff that when Jerry’s body was found, he would be the one to bring him out of the water.

“‘You have to promise me,’ I told him, ‘I’m his daddy, and it’s my responsibility to get him out.’ The sheriff agreed,” Morgan shares. When the call finally did come, Morgan and Karen went to Kentucky Lake. The sheriff graciously sent an ambulance to another part of the lake, so the media would go there, allowing the family some privacy to grieve.

“I went down in the water,” Morgan recounts. “Jerry’s hands were clasped and he had a peaceful look on his face. He gazed upward, as if glancing toward heaven. Karen kissed him on the head. We placed him in the ambulance and said our goodbyes.”

Three years after Jerry passed away, Morgan poured out his grief into his song, “The Father, My Son and the Holy Ghost.”

“Jerry had been gone almost three years in January 2019 when one night Karen and I lay down to go to bed. I kissed her good night and she started crying. I knew exactly why,” Morgan writes. “After you lose a child, any sense of joy or love you feel comes along with a sense of guilt: I should never be happy. Jerry’s gone. That night, Karen cried out of the suffering. I felt it, too. We went to bed, falling off in our own cocoons of grief.”

In the middle of the night, Morgan woke up with the lyrics for what became “The Father, My Son and the Holy Ghost” quickly pouring out of him.

“It must have been 3:00, 3:30 AM when my eyes opened and my legs said, ‘Time to go.’ I poured myself a cup of coffee and walked out to the living room with my guitar. There was a lot of emotion in me, from that moment with Karen the night before, and all our months moving through the pain. And something just happened. That emotion and a tune, words—it was my emotion coming into a song. God talking through me. I recorded the lyrics as they came to me.”

Morgan will embark on a six-city book tour, beginning in Ridgewood, New Jersey on September 26, and wrapping up in Los Angeles, California on October 1. An expanded God, Family, Country (Deluxe Edition) album, which features four new tracks, including “How You Make A Man,” will be available on November 11.

Morgan will embark on his God, Family, Country Tour on October 19. The tour will play in 11 cities, concluding on November 11 with a special Veterans Day show at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, which will also serve as Morgan’s first headlining show in the historic venue. Ray Fulcher will serve as the opening act for all shows.

Keep track of updates at CraigMorgan.com. Pre-order God, Family, Country here.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Monarch Publicity / Nate Griffin