A Kick-Ass Fairy: A Memoir

by Linda Zercoe

Overview

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A KICK-ASS FAIRY?

Looking for a fairy tale to make into a musical? Look somewhere else.
Linda Zercoe offers up a series of unfortunate events in a memoir that rivals the stories of the Brothers Grimm. Life can be capricious and cruel. In this memoir, the author-heroine faces family tragedy and battles multiple forms of cancer. Through one trial after another, Zercoe learns to harness her talents and powers and develop the strength, gumption and resilience to make a life worth living. Attitude is a potent charm against all forms of adversity, and this particular kick-ass fairy proves it's not what you've got, but what you do with it that counts.

Reviews
"An incredibly moving memoir. Linda Zercoe's book forces us to travel to an intimate and sometimes terrifying world of cancer - but never allows us to lose hope."
--SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE, M.D., assistant professor of medicine, oncologist and researcher at Columbia University Medical Center, NY; author of The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction.

"This book will give you a glimpse of what it's like to be affected by cancer and make you aware of how much more needs to be done to support patients and families with cancer and inherited malignancies."
--MARGARET A. TEMPERO, M.D., Director, UCSF Pancreas Center; Leader, Pancreas Center Program; Professor of Medicine, Division of Hematology and Oncology, UCSF;
The Rombauer Family Distinguished Professorship in Pancreas Cancer Clinical and Translational Science

"Into each life some suffering comes, but Linda Zercoe has faced with bravery and hope more than her share, leaving the rest of us an awe-inspiring journey of perseverance and grit."
--KEN BURNS, Award-winning filmmaker of historical documentaries including The Civil War, The Brooklyn Bridge, The Dust Bowl, Baseball. One of his current projects is a six-part series, Cancer: The Emperor of all Maladies coming to PBS in Spring 2015.

"Linda Zercoe describes herself as a cancerian and a Cancer Warrior and in her memoir, it becomes clear why these are fitting designations for a woman with a hard shell who is soft inside, like her astrological symbol."
--JEAN SHINODA BOLEN, M.D., author of Close to the Bone: Life Threatening Illness as a Soul Journey

"I have learned that there is survival behavior and that a patient who exceeds expectations is not just lucky but has induced the changes and the behavior which led to their survival. Being a good patient means being a submissive sufferer and Linda is what I call a 'respant' or responsible participant who can be a life coach for us all."
--BERNIE SIEGEL, M.D., author of A Book of Miracles and Faith, Hope & Healing

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780989581554
Publisher:	Hidden Oak Press
Publication date:	09/22/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
File size:	620 KB

Editorial Reviews

2013-12-05
A detailed memoir from a registered nurse about her battles with cancer, again and again and again. Zercoe can't seem to escape tragedy. As a young child, she was thrown from the window of a school bus when the driver took a turn too quickly. As a young wife and mother, she was told by her brother-in-law that her husband had been electrocuted and killed. As a businesswoman, wife and mother of two, she found a small lump in her breast. And that was only the beginning. A year and a half later, after her first mastectomy, the cancer returned, forcing her to have a lumpectomy followed by yet another mastectomy. Five years later, there was a splitting pain in her side, which led doctors to discover she had pancreatic cancer. Throughout these tragedies, Zercoe juggled the minutiae of everyday life--marriage woes, brooding teenage children, lost promotions--and strove to find joy. Her cancer treatments ranged from chemo to surgery to support groups as she survived one medical mess after another. Discovering her family's extensive history with cancer gave Zercoe the drive to let her unique case help medical research. And she needed all her strength and heart to face the news of her young daughter's own cancer diagnosis. It took everything being stripped away to show Zercoe what mattered most: love and family in the present moment. The litany of misfortune can sometimes make for hard reading; there's so much plot that the narration lacks a pause, a place for readers to check in with how Zercoe was feeling at the moment. What's more, the many details of problems that arose when life wasn't at stake, such as nannies who quit or living in a house as it was remodeled, can sound trivial. The narration often strays into real diary entries, which don't do much to illuminate Zercoe's internal journey. But there's reward in the memoir's second half, when it focuses on the author's hopeful transformation through spirituality and her forming true bonds with women she wants to help. In these final chapters, Zercoe's compassion and humanity shine, and readers can revel in not only her relative health, but her ultimate happiness. A foreword by Margaret A. Tempero, director of the UCSF Pancreas Center, offers additional insight. A one-of-a-kind cancer story that makes for a riveting, if not particularly illuminating, account.

Kirkus Reviews