2024 Winner of the Gilda Prize, Story Circle Network's Women's Book AwardsA Reading Group Choices Favorite Nonfiction Book of 2024A sharp, funny, and heartfelt memoir of losing both parents to cancer and the daring choices Gila Pfeffer made to avoid the same early demiseBy the time she was thirty, Gila Pfeffer was the oldest living member of her family, having lost her mother to breast cancer and her father to colon cancer. A simple blood test confirm...

By the time she was thirty, Gila Pfeffer was the oldest living member of her family, having lost her mother to breast cancer and her father to colon cancer. A simple blood test confirmed she carried the BRCA1 gene—which put her at high risk of developing cancer herself. Determined to break the cycle of early death in her family, Gila decides to undergo an elective double mastectomy.This memoir follows her journey as she becomes a reluctant expert on how to sit shiva, grows up, fall...