Between Two Kingdoms and Wilderness

Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park has it all. A trail for every mood, a loop for every time constraint, I've hiked the park for hours and I've popped in for 20 minute runs. 

 

It might be tempting to summarize Between Two Kingdoms as a memoir about surviving cancer, but Suleika Jaouad manages, in the end, to make her battle with leukemia incidental. This is a coming of age story.  

 

*spoilers follow*

On its surface, Between Two Kingdoms is one third diagnosis, one third cancer battle, and one third life after recovery. But the sections also read as a love story, a fight through hopelessness, and a modern day Travels With Charley. 

 

The book is riddled with painful scenes. One that stands out deals with her realization that her treatment will leave her infertile. She needs to make an immediate decision whether to freeze eggs or embryos, but there are concerns about the time needed and medical uncertainty of finding a donor.

 

Her new but devoted boyfriend offers to donate sperm. Suleika, deeply in love, is overjoyed by the prospect until a social worker talks them both through the potential for legal and personal upheaval. The conversation sums up a feeling. The young woman who has suddenly lost all that she was also, in this moment, loses much of what she hoped to become. 

In the last third of the book Suleika takes a 100 day road trip through the US to meet with people who have written her over the years. I would read an entire book of travelogues by this author. Her lens is thoughtful and honest. She takes responsibility for her mistakes and is generous with other people's. She stares despair and loss in its face and there beauty hides. Finding it is natural, not an exercise she must perform.

 

Whiting, like every piece of wilderness, is filled with reminders that passage and preservation are tight bound twins. From every loss, there is new growth.

 

I listened to this book on Libby through my library. Read by the author, it is 13hours and 2minutes.