Lauren Grodstein captures the poignant, yet sad thoughts of a woman at the end of her life. Having friends and relatives who have faced the same, I think what must be horrific, reality that your dying of cancer, I cannot imagine what that is like. What thoughts go through your mind as you are living with a time bomb in your own body. Grodstein attempts to put down in writing the thoughts and needs of a cancer patient who is dying way too young.
Karen Neulander is a 40 something mother and career woman. She has worked since her teens and now has a well established business set up with her partner Chuck running election campaigns. She has candidate, Ace Reynolds, whose re-election campaign looks like a shoo in. During her thirties she met the love of her life, Dave Kersey, a one term Democratic congressman from New Jersey. When she gets pregnant Dave says he is not interested in having children. Karen leaves and gives birth and brings up her son, Jacob, without ever telling Dave. Now seven years later she is dying from ovarian cancer and her son who she wants to leave in the custody of her sister, wants to meet his father.
This book is Karen's thoughts and feelings about her life, career and messages she wants to leave her son. She writes about the present thinking that her son will read this when he is an adult. When he has no siblings or parents to reminisce with about childhood memories, and he wonders what his mother was like. She also is examining her feelings about leaving her son at such a young age. Interestingly through it all she is determined to keep working. She ignores pain and possible signs that she should go to her doctor, to keep working and spending time with her son. She also wants to give Jacob everything she can before she cannot. So when he asks to meet his Dad, she goes against her personal wishes and introduces them to each other.
This is a story about love, sacrifice, parenthood and ultimately life itself.
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