Letters from the Land of Cancer [Hardcover]

Walter Wangerin Jr. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 26, 2010

In Letters from the Land of Cancer, award-winning writer Walter Wangerin Jr. offers his profound insights into the greatest challenge we face: confronting our own mortality. 'Shortly after the cancer had been diagnosed I began writing letters to the members of my immediate family, to relatives and to lifelong friends. The following book will consist mostly of those letters. They will invite you into my most intimate dancing with the cancer, even as that partner and I have over the last two years swung each other around the tiled floors of ballrooms and bathrooms. Dizzy still, and day by day, I sat and wrote: This is what I'm feeling right now. This is what I think....' From afternoon to afternoon of radiation, Wangerin wrote about confronting his mortality, about living with the messiness of undone tasks and bodily weakness. He wrote about the medical procedures he endured, the wild mood swings that unbalanced his days, and the fragilities and strengths of the relationships that surrounded him. Letters from the Land of Cancer is made up of these writings. Cadenced within the letters are Wangerin's eloquent meditations derived from his pastoral experiences with the faithful passage of death to life. Seldom has the great adventure of life and death been as beautifully presented as it is in this testimony to faith, love, and the shocking reality of hope.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The prospect of hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully, wrote essayist Samuel Johnson. In the case of prolific writer and teacher Wangerin (Saint Julian), a diagnosis of lung cancer drove him not to despair but to writing, his usual mode of making sense of things. He tells his family it's an adventure; cancer is his wrestling with God and the big questions, as mortality gets right up in his face. A series of 22 letters—addressed mostly to friends to convey news of his progress—and seven meditations recapitulate the long, pain-filled journey through chemotherapy and radiation treatment so strong it eventually, literally, takes his breath away, diminishing tumors and lung capacity. Wangerin's detailing is concrete, from the joy of touching his grandchild's finger to the who-knew? myriad changes wrought by mortal illness. Faith may be his armor, but he is no noble knight, revealing peevishness, arrogance, self-absorption. No one speaks from the other side, but Wangerin, his cancer now sleeping, has gone before us with fierce honesty, peering over the edge and reporting. (Feb.)
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From Booklist

National Book Award–winning novelist and inspirational writer Wangerin makes sense of his world by and through his writing. Thus it makes perfect sense for him to begin writing about the experience of having incurable cancer within a month of diagnosis. It is also perfectly logical for him to continue to share his ideas, his fears, his sources of strength, and his reality with others via the written word. Lucky are his readers. Admittedly, the topic of a dying man with no hope of long-term survival can be unpleasant, but Wangerin’s perspectives are awe-inspiring, perhaps even unique. His considerations, in particular his take on popular culture’s characterization of dealing with cancer as a battle, are the products of a man close to himself in body, mind, and spirit. With doctor visits, hospital stays, tests, medications, and therapies congesting his life, there also has been plenty of time for contemplation, time that he has infused with great, inspired wisdom. QY: Add Jr. to author’s name in bib data? --Donna Chavez

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Zondervan (January 26, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0310292816
• ISBN-13: 978-0310292814
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #268,779 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful letters, January 31, 2010

By 

Joel Holtz (Vadnais Heights, MN) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Letters from the Land of Cancer (Hardcover)

In this powerful collection of letters and meditations, award winning author Wangerin writes with raw honesty and challenges all of us to think about our own mortality, and possibly rethink our view of cancer.

He starts by calling his 2 year long bout with lung cancer a "dance" and later on, an "adventure." He refuses to call it a "battle."

The reader finds out about half way through the book that although Wangerin can't bring himself to pray for his own healing, he is certain .."healing is surely to come; either healing of his body or his own weary spirit."

The book is really all about facing our own mortality, which Wangerin says .."brings out the child in us,the heart filled with childlike longings and an infant's perfect trust."

All of the letters, written mostly to family members and friends, are beautifully put together with the grace and eloquence associated with Wangerin. #9 and #19 are two of the best. In maybe the most poignant of all the letters, you get a sense of Phil 1:23 as the author writes to a former student: .."I don't pray for death. But I wouldn't mind an early visitation. There is just so much about this world and its leaders which is so disappointing it crushes my heart.."

The beauty of the book is perhaps summed up best by the last sentence of letter #15: .."It is a good day. Gladness is available. Christ is at hand."

This is a must read for all, for we all have to face what Wangerin so honestly, beautifully and courageously faces head on... our own mortality.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Personal and forthright, May 29, 2010

By 

Showme (Missouri) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Letters from the Land of Cancer (Hardcover)

I'm not a religious sort, and I'm generally not a fan of poetry, so whether on the spiritual or literary planes, any Biblical verses Mr. Wangerin cited were pretty lost on me. However, they could be precisely what another reader might like best.

I found that I skipped the meditations and focused on the letters. The letter on pain ("I contain pain.") is the most memorable. Other standouts: how some of his human frailties (i.e., flashes of anger) emerged at different times; his description of trying to get air; his sense of Time and paying attention; and his close examination of his grandchildren's hands.

The ending disconcerted me; its abruptness contrasted sharply with the careful thoughtfulness of all that preceded it.

For such a small book, it is meaty, and I recommend it.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Draws Us Into His Private Life, Not as Voyeurs but as Fellow Travelers, June 16, 2010

By 

FaithfulReader.com (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Letters from the Land of Cancer (Hardcover)

On December 26, 2005, with his adult children and grandchildren still gathered in for the holiday, Walter Wangerin Jr. discovered a lump in his neck that proved to be a malignant tumor, metastasized from his lung.

Three weeks later, he wrote the first of 22 letters --- updating friends on his prognoses and treatments, his physical and spiritual health, and his reflections on life in the shadow of death --- most of them sent out over 18 months. (A few are marked as being "never sent.") These are missives a younger writer might have posted on a blog site. I infer that he wrote them on a typewriter, engaging an assistant to format them for an email outbox. Halfway through the collection, he mentions the possibility of publication. (In the second half, his writing seems a little less intimate, as if he's consciously aware of his potential readership.) Indeed, the letters are presented here for a wider audience, interspersed with short meditations --- six by his own hand, a seventh by poet Robert Siegel.

In the prologue he explains, "I'll tell my story step-by-step from within the ongoing experience. I needn't draw from memory." Especially in the first half, that immediacy is evident. What will the doctor say tomorrow? How will he respond to this pain --- or this pain killer? "I contain pain," he writes. And "I am sincerely grateful that my adventure waited until there were therapies and drugs to serve this sort of thing [pain]" --- though it seems much of the pain is caused by curative therapies. How does this disease change his relationship with his wife, his grandchildren, and his garden? The book works because Wangerin is such a good writer. He draws us into his private life, not as voyeurs but as fellow travelers.

Some of Wangerin's more interesting comments have to do with the language we use about cancer: we battle against it. "Cancer really isn't an issue of defeat or victory. We are all going to die." He goes on to talk of blessings received as a result of his cancer. "Surely it's high Time --- isn't it? --- that we pay as much attention to the blessings of a long affliction as we do to the pain for which we curse it." He also interestingly works with words, turning slowth --- some combination of slow and growth --- into a noun that describes benefits of facing daily life at a reduced pace, not by choice but by forced circumstance.

Would I recommend this to a person of faith who has metastasized cancer? Yes, if that person has a solid familial network, for that is where Wangerin gains much of his focus and strength. The book ends with a two-line postscript, in which Wangerin states that his health was "stable" in April 2008. That's nearly 20 months before publication in early 2010. Though strangers to him, readers invited into his life would have welcomed a well-deserved, press-time update.

--- Reviewed by Evelyn Bence