This is a stunning memoir, well-crafted and hard to put down. Definitely one of the very best books I have read. An amazing memoir of severe illness and the trials and tribulations towards a journey of recovery. Finally, a hundred-day road trip visiting those who wrote her letters guided her “to live again in the aftermath.” Every chapter ends with a cliffhanger, adding a surprising level of suspense to a work where the broader outcome isn’t in question. Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad This book is absolutely mind blowing, I finished reading it a week ago and my mind is still digesting it. Meaning is what’s left when everything else is stripped away.” As Jaouad’s cancer went into remission, she felt estranged as fellow cancer patient friends died and her longtime boyfriend left her. I wasn’t a hypochondriac, after all, making up symptoms.” During her treatment, which was documented in a series of blog posts and videos for the Times, she was bolstered by heartfelt letters from readers, including one from a man in Ohio who wrote, “Meaning is not found in the material realm.

At 22, she wrote of the diagnosis, “I finally had an explanation for my itch, for my mouth sores, for my unraveling. After becoming ill, she returned to her family home in Saratoga, N.Y., and was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. Symptoms first surfaced just before her graduation from Princeton, and she moved to Paris unaware of the cancer ravaging her bone marrow. New York Times columnist Jaouad (Life, Interrupted) makes a phenomenal debut with this big-hearted account of her devastating five-year battle with cancer. And so she set out to meet some of the strangers who had written to her about their experiences of life, death, healing and recovery in response to her Emmy.

Between two kingdoms suleika jaouad