Delia Ephron's beautifully measured, eloquent and moving memoir of illness, death and the possibility of finding love later in life is an emotional rollercoaster. Left on Tenth begins in 2015 when Ephron (Siracusa) is 71. After a decade-long battle with prostate cancer, her husband of 32 years, author Jerome Allan Kass, receives hospice care. "He was my true home," she writes. "My first safe place." She is left alone after his death in their 10th Street apartment in New York City's Greenwich Village. Three years earlier, her sister Nora Ephron had died after living with acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) for six years, which Nora had kept a secret. Delia had lived through more than a decade of dealing with two family members' chronic illnesses and death.
A year after her husband's death, she reconnects with a widowed doctor; Nora had set Delia up on a date with him when Delia was only 18. They quickly fall in love. Suddenly, her life is a lot like a rom-com script written by Nora and Delia Ephron. When Delia is diagnosed with AML, she undergoes chemotherapy, but her remission lasts only eight months. A bone marrow transplant with a survival rate of 20% is her only option. Her grueling and horrifying months-long hospitalization leaves her depleted, severely depressed and suicidal. The fact that she does indeed recover is remarkably uplifting and should give hope to others battling diseases.
Ephron's reluctance to portray herself as an ideal patient taps into readers' empathy and adds tremendous power to her brutally candid and moving memoir of her long battle with a very aggressive cancer. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant