Songs from a Lead-Lined Room

A moving and uplifting breast cancer journal from the beloved author of Hoopi Shoopi Donna and Selling the Lite of Heaven Songs from a Lead-Lined Room is a memoir rooted in truth and raw experience with a sure and compelling woman's voice. The leadlined room is the radiation therapy unit where Suzanne was treated for breast cancer. Her diary of this time is powerful and illuminating. As with Shea's acclaimed fiction her sharp and insightful wit her reporter's eye for the most telling and sometimes quirky details as well as her gift and grace with metaphor and image inform every page. Shea shares her despair indignity and fear as well as the compassion and caring of her friends her husband and fellow patients. For the 192000 women who undergo radiation for breast cancer every year for their extended families friends and therapists Suzanne Shea offers important insights. As she explores the unthinkable-the sentence of life with an often fatal illness-she traces a parallel story that of a sixteen-year-old life guard abducted from a neighborhood park and sharing a life in limbo. It's a book full of wisdom humor contradiction and ultimately solace.