Written by a Jungian psychoanalyst about her own experience with metastatic breast cancer, this memoir is a two year chronicle extending from the day of diagnosis through sequential remissions and relapse, to the remission following stem cell transplant. In the course of this voyage, the author deals with her own fear and anger, the range of responses elicited from family and friends, and her anxiety about the technology and impersonality of the health care system.

The book ends, but Middlebrook's story does not. She is feeling well as she recovers from her transplant. She knows she still has a lethal tumor. The only thing she doesn't know is when it will claim her life.