She Came to Live Out Loud

Sara Ivry

...[A] rich description of an optimisticcharismatic woman who stubbornly refused to allow illness to run her life... —The New York Times Book Review

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

MacPherson (The Power Lovers) brings more literary sophistication to her account of witnessing a dignified dying than Mitch Albom brought to his bestselling Tuesdays with Morrie. As a result, her book is less sentimental. It is also as concerned with the larger issues of how society treats disease and dying as it is with portraying the vitality of its subject, Anna Johannessen, a 40-year-old wife and mother of two preteen children, who battled breast cancer and lost. MacPherson writes that, after the death of her own mother, she became acutely aware of "an American paradox of insane proportions. We encounter loss and sorrow daily. And yet we collude in a pathological dance of denial that merely heightens the pain of grieving." Following Anna through the ups and downs of cancer treatment, MacPherson records, in great detail, conversations between Anna and her doctors, relatives, friends and counselors. She also interviews Anna directly, revealing her thoughts, feelings and worries at various stages of her disease. Deliberately forsaking journalistic objectivity, MacPherson occasionally gushes in her praise of Anna and her family, but she succeeds in bringing readers into the dying woman's intimate world and in conveying everyone's grief, which "begins at the moment of diagnosis." The book dwells on Anna's every experience with medical treatments, hospice care and relationships. If she sometimes gets bogged down in details, MacPherson deserves credit for going beyond mere uplift into the nitty gritty dailiness of living and dying with an awful disease.

Sara Ivry

...[A] rich description of an optimistic, charismatic woman who stubbornly refused to allow illness to run her life...
— The New York Times Book Review

Kirkus Reviews

Teacher and entrepreneur Anna Johannessen was 37 when first diagnosed with breast cancer; after a spirited, valiant eight-year battle with the disease, she died, leaving two children (ages 11 and 13), her husband, and legions of devoted friends. Journalist MacPherson (formerly of the Washington Post and the New York Times; Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the Haunted Generation, 1984, etc.) was moved to write this account after suffering losses in her own family. She spent two years following the Johannessen family during Anna's illness and here chronicles their ordeal, beginning with the initial, shocking diagnosis (like more than 70 percent of women who develop breast cancer, Anna had no genetic or other high-risk factors) and ending with Anna's eventual peaceful death at home. As recounted here, Anna tried bravely to keep control over her illness and treatment, finding an oncologist with whom she was comfortable, exploring all treatment options, including those that were experimental (her husband, a biomedical researcher, helped immeasurably in keeping her regimens at the forefront of breast cancer treatment). MacPherson pauses frequently throughout to explore issues common to families facing a similar medical crisis: difficulty finding the most effective treatment, insurance foul-ups, masculine/feminine grieving styles, children's issues, how death actually approaches, and what support can be found from outside sources such as hospices-MacPherson draws on expert views as well as her own and the Johannessens' experiences. Her close involvement with the family, however, leads to a sometimes awkward presentation-neither an uninvolved observer nor an intimate,MacPherson is nonetheless far too involved to offer clear-eyed, straightforward advice. Families actively involved in a similar heartbreaking journey don't need to read of another family's pain-rather, they'll benefit more from some more succinct, well-organized help for day-to-day survival than is presented here. . .