The Middle Place

In a coming of age memoir about a woman who loved being a girl and the things that made her finally grow up, Kelly Corrigan brilliantly explores the “middle place” between childhood and adulthood, and how one woman made the leap to the other side.

“The thing you need to know about me,” she begins, “is that I am George Corrigan’s daughter, his only daughter.” Intertwining her own story with that of her larger-than-life, Irish-American, born-salesman father, Corrigan illustrates an unbelievably powerful and healing father/daughter relationship which evolves as they both must battle cancer.

Uplifting without shying away from the realities of illness, Corrigan’s highly personal story examines what it means when the one person who has been your source of strength is in need of some himself, and that bittersweet “in between” moment when you’re a devoted wife and mother, but you’ll always be daddy’s girl.

Publishers Weekly

Newspaper columnist Corrigan was a happily married mother of two young daughters when she discovered a cancerous lump in her breast. She was still undergoing treatment when she learned that her beloved father, who'd already survived prostate cancer, now had bladder cancer. Corrigan's story could have been unbearably depressing had she not made it clear from the start that she came from sturdy stock. Growing up, she loved hearing her father boom out his morning "HELLO WORLD" dialogue with the universe, so his kids would feel like the world wasn't just a "safe place" but was "even rooting for you." As Corrigan reports on her cancer treatment-the chemo, the surgery, the radiation-she weaves in the story of how it felt growing up in a big, suburban Philadelphia family with her larger-than-life father and her steady-loving mother and brothers. She tells how she met her husband, how she gave birth to her daughters. All these stories lead up to where she is now, in that "middle place," being someone's child, but also having children of her own. Those learning to accept their own adulthood might find strength-and humor-in Corrigan's feisty memoir. (Jan.)

Kelly Corrigan is, more than anything else, the mother of two young girls. While they're at school, Kelly writes a newspaper column and the occasional magazine article and possible chapters of a novel. She is also the creator of CircusOfCancer.org, a website to teach people how to help a friend through breast cancer. Kelly lives outside San Francisco with her husband, Edward Lichty.