{"product_id":"9781439107751","title":"A Whole New Life: An Illness and a Healing","description":"Reynolds Price has long been one of America's most acclaimed and accomplished men of letters -- the author of novels, stories, poems, essays, plays, and a memoir. In \u003ci\u003eA Whole New Life,\u003c\/i\u003e however, he steps from behind that roster of achievements to present us with a more personal story, a narrative as intimate and compelling as any work of the imagination.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1984, a large cancer was discovered in his spinal cord (\"The tumor was pencil-thick and gray-colored, ten inches long from my neck-hair downward\"). Here, for the first time, Price recounts without self-pity what became a long struggle to withstand and recover from this appalling, if all too common, affliction (one American in three will experience some from of cancer). He charts the first puzzling symptoms; the urgent surgery that fails to remove the growth and the radiation that temporarily arrests it (but hurries his loss of control of his lower body); the occasionally comic trials of rehab; the steady rise of severe pain and reliance on drugs; two further radical surgeries; the sustaining force of a certain religious vision; an eventual discovery of help from biofeedback and hypnosis; and the miraculous return of his powers as a writer in a new, active life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBeyond the particulars of pain and mortal illness, larger concerns surface here -- a determination to get on with the human interaction that is so much a part of this writer's much-loved work, the gratitude he feels toward kin and friends and some (though by no means \u003ci\u003eall)\u003c\/i\u003e doctors, the return to his prolific work, and the \"now appalling, now astonishing grace of God.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eA Whole New Life\u003c\/i\u003e offers more than the portrait of one brave person in tribulation; it offers honest insight, realistic encouragement and inspiration to others who suffer the bafflement of catastrophic illness or who know someone who does or will.","brand":"Scribner","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47123546603760,"sku":"9781439107751","price":11.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781439107751_p0.jpg?v=1763756127","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781439107751","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}