A Journal for Lalie: Living Through Prostate Cancer

In 1993, David Dick was diagnosed with prostate cancer, a life-threatening disease that affects thousands of men - potentially most men. Over the years since that first diagnosis, Dick has seen his PSA (prostate-specific antigen) number rise and fall in response to a long list of medical procedures administered by a host of skilled medical specialists.

More important, however, has been the support of his partner for life, Eulalie Cumbo Dick, known to friends and Dicks' devoted readership as Lalie. "We're in this together," she told him in the beginning. And the journal Dick has kept in the years since 1993 warmly chronicles their journey together through the medical maze of cancer treatment and, more importantly, through lives devoted to one another, to family, to writing and publishing and teaching, and to sustaining an outlook on the world that gives meaning to the word "life."

Besides Lalie, David Dick has had another supporter, cheerleader, and guru in the person of a dog named Cat, one of the smartest and wisest canines to grace the pages of a book in many a year. Cat and Dick discuss cancer and other kinds of "coyotes" in an extended series of discussions that touch on issues of life and death, virtue and folly, and the ironies of modern living. Cat will be welcomed to the pantheon of famous literary dogs, from Cervantes' Cipión to Berganza.

A Journal for Lalie is a book for men who have, or may someday have, prostate cancer, and equally for the women who will follow in the Dick's footsteps as they negotiate the same rocky medical trail with their loved ones. It is David Dick's most personal book, yet one that will bring hope, laughter and inspiration to the thousands who have laughed and loved their way through his previous books.