by Nina Riggs
First published 2017
Nina Riggs receives a breast cancer diagnosis at thirty-seven. What begins as one small spot becomes terminal cancer within a year. She must navigate each remaining day while mothering sons aged seven and nine and staying married to her partner of sixteen years. Riggs explores how to live without attachment to outcomes and how to approach both significant and ordinary moments with honesty and love. She examines her roles as mother, wife, and friend while grappling with the literary legacy of her ancestor Ralph Waldo Emerson. The memoir asks what creates meaning when time runs short. Riggs writes with humor and directness about loving all days, including difficult ones. She finds comfort in literature, particularly the works of Emerson and Montaigne, treating these texts as both healing and spiritual practice. The book confronts mortality directly while celebrating what defines humanity: love, art, music, and language.
Genres: literary-fiction, family-life, grief, autobiography, memoir, non-fiction, biography-memoir, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, grief
288 pages · Hardcover · Simon & Schuster
Content warnings: death, terminal-illness