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When Lauren Segal, successful historian and curator, wife and mother, receives a call from her husband one wintry morning in 2014, the furthest thing from mind is her biopsy results. For two years she’s been living a cancer-free existence after a double mastectomy that has put her in the clear. The call shatters the foundation of her world as she hears the news – the lump she thought was scar tissue is malignant. Her cancer is back. Cancer: A Love Story is the intimately searing memoir of a four-time cancer survivor. The book breathlessly tracks Lauren’s journey to come to terms with the untold challenges of facing the dreaded disease. Forced to face her needle phobia, the author leads the reader into her crumbling world as she confronts the terrors of treatment – from debilitating chemo to nuking radiation. Death is her uninvited companion. But in the midst of her lonely horror, in a quest for deeper meaning, Lauren discovers the unexpected gift of awareness of unanticipated opportunities that cancer presents – to confront her unmasked humanity – her fears, strengths and weaknesses. “I have come to understand that in the same way that the majestic lotus flower has its roots in murky waters, so too does the emergence of beauty in life sometimes depend on life’s darker events. Throughout my arduous journey into the world of cancer, I have discovered that proximity to death brings with it a new proximity to life. I have learned that luck and unluck, happiness and distress, hope and despair are tightly coiled into a life well lived.”