My Husband's Memoir of Comedy, Survival, and Love about the Worst Year of Our Lives
Note from Susan
Many readers of my newsletter and blog tell me they are fans of my husband Seth Greenland’s writing. He has a new book coming out next week. This one is a memoir about the worst year of our lives. Twenty-seven years ago, our lives were turned upside down when Seth was diagnosed with Stage 4 lymphoma. Our daughter was a toddler, and I was a working mom pregnant with our son. Seth’s prognosis was not great, and without warning, we were catapulted into the most challenging year of our lives. It’s a year during which I often wondered if I would become a widow and single mom in my mid-thirties. No surprise, it was also the year I learned to meditate, and Seth includes that humbling and highly entertaining story in his memoir.
Here are some early reviews:
“[Greenland] provides genial, engaging, humorous company throughout the narrative, showing how one can gain a new appreciation for life at its most mundane as well as miraculous.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Absorbing and funny...Readers may come for the screenwriter/novelist’s cancer story, but they’ll stay for his gifts as a raconteur.”—Shelf Awareness
And, here’s what Seth has to say about the book:
At the age of thirty-seven, I was diagnosed with Stage 4 lymphoma. Our daughter was a toddler, and Susan was pregnant with our son. The prognosis was not good. I only told a few friends what was going on because I was terrified that I would die and didn’t want to broadcast what a dark turn my life had taken.
After receiving the diagnosis, one of the first things I did was go to the Barnes & Noble on Broadway at 82nd Street in Manhattan and buy a ton of books. I read them back to back and hated every one. Admittedly, this was 1993, and there have been some worthwhile ones written in the meantime. But I digress. Where was the first-person account, written in a loose, amusing yet informative style by someone who had been through this terrifying experience and (big caveat) lived to write about it? I vowed to write that book if I survived. Well, I’m still here, and A Kingdom of Tender Colors is that book.
If you’re dealing with cancer, or if you know anyone dealing with cancer (that pretty much covers all of us, doesn’t it?), I hope this book will be useful. And if you’re not, or you don’t know anyone that is, there are entertaining stories about holistic medicine, meditation (including Susan’s origin story), tai chi, prayer, and how coffee enemas changed my life. And I don’t have to tell you there’s a happy ending.
When a book goes into the world, its success is often determined during the first few weeks. Please consider ordering it now, either for yourself or someone going through a tough time and might benefit from reading about a positive outcome.
In the meantime, please stay healthy, use sunscreen, eat a high fiber diet, and remember to vote!
With gratitude, Seth Greenland
Seth Greenland is an American novelist, whose work includes The Bones, Shining City (A Washington Post Book of the Year), The Angry Buddhist, I Regret Everything, The Hazards of Good Fortune (nominated for the 2019 Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger), and most recently, A Kingdom of Tender Colors. Greenland is also a playwright and screenwriter, whose play, Jungle Rot, won the Kennedy Center/American Express Fund for New American Plays Award and the American Theater Critics Association Award and was anthologized in Best American Plays. To learn more about Seth, read a profile here, and visit his website www.sethgreenland.com..