For anyone who's had a loved one die from cancer, Dancing at the Edge of Life will hit home and hit hard. After a pesky cough drove her to the doctor's office, 30-year-old poet and writer Gale Warner was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a viciously malignant form of the disease. She immediately started to record her often extraordinary thoughts in a diary. When she passed away a little more than a year later, she had compiled 1,000 pages of her spiritual and physical illumination and desperation, from the ecstasy of living through a good day to the excruciation of a bone marrow transplant.
What makes this book remarkable is Warner's perspective through it all. Though not particularly religious, she endured her treatment with Job-like patience, fortitude, and grace, reasoning that with each setback--and with each victory--she ought to be able to unveil a life lesson, to become closer to the spirit of the earth. She also perceived her bone marrow transplant as a ritual reincarnation of sorts. While her earth-goddess philosophy may strike some readers as being too far out in left field (she writes of feeling as if she's a channel of sorts for the pollution and destruction of the land), her love of the earth and perception of her role on it is extraordinarily thought provoking.
From Publishers Weekly
When poet and journalist Gale Warner, 29, learned that she had lymphoma, she used her journal to record her experiences and explore her feelings, hoping it might one day become a book. Though Warner didn't live to see its publication, her memoir serves well as the "gift" she had intended for patients and others seeking inspiration. "What a powerful tool the mystery of illness can be for learning and teaching," she discovered. Though relatively young at the time of her diagnosis, Warner was especially accomplished: she had traveled widely, started environmental organizations and written two books (including The Invisible Threads), but was particularly proud of her work with citizens environmental groups in the Soviet Union. She came to understand her illness in spiritual terms related to these ideals: "What grew [my tumor] was my very deep connection to the Earth, my openness to her pain," Warner claims. With the support of her physician husband, Kreger, who shaped the journal into its finished form, and countless friends, Warner confronted her cancer with remarkable honesty, wit and courage. She describes goddess-oriented healing rituals, several bouts of chemotherapy, her boundless hope and her occasional depression, and her irrepressible urge to walk, swim and dance in the natural world she so loved. Some readers may be troubled by Warner's construction of her illness as a metaphorAbut Warner anticipates this criticism, noting that "[t]o each of us, cancer says different things... for some, cancer is... a random event with no 'cause.'" Others may find Warner's New Age beliefs alienating. But the humor, compassion, determination and acceptance she shares in this affecting book are truly extraordinary.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
See all Editorial Reviews
