The Cost of Hope

In this affecting memoir, Bennett, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, narrates a history of marriage and its end, when her husband of 20 years, Terrence Foley, dies at 67 of kidney cancer. They met in post–Cultural Revolution China in 1983, where she was on assignment and he was bringing soybeans to the Chinese masses. Foley announced almost immediately that they were going to marry and have kids. Bennett, 12 years his junior, intended to never see him again. And yet, feeling the overpowering loneliness of being a foreigner in a very strange land, the next day, she went on a walk with him, followed by movies and dinners. They infuriated each other, but when he traveled she realized she was even more miserable. Three years later they’re stateside and happily married despite the fighting. Their lives are ordinary—they have a son, adopt a daughter, change jobs, move multiple times—until his cancer in late 2000. Foley has surgery to remove his colon and one of his kidneys, and cheats death twice more over the next seven years as they decide to get on with doing what they love. Foley earns the Ph.D. he started in 1957 and learns Arabic while Bennett becomes the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, and they watch their children grow up. Although their love affair ends sadly, their story of how to fight for any hope you can get when there seems to be none, provides touching and instructive wisdom for the millions affected by cancer. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM. (June)