In The Pregnancy Project, Propp chronicled her experiences with infertility treatments. Now, she offers a look at the equally intimate ordeal of husband Sam's prostate cancer. In clear, short sentences, Propp creates a cancer memoir not from the patient's viewpoint, but her own. Karen was nearing 40 when she married and struggled to have a child, yet says she and Sam are both "young to be going through this." Unlike the older women in her support group, Karen represents baby-boomers who were told they could have it all, who remained single long enough to get used to being the center of their own lives, and who did not expect to caretake their sick husbands. She deftly describes her world of Jewish, intellectual types in the Boston area, the single life she only gradually leaves behind and her constantly changing marital relationship. Karen's poetic command of language and her mature confrontation of the realities of life, love and long-term marriage make this memoir unusually forceful. The pall of Sam's first wife's death from cancer, the difficult conception of Karen's and Sam's child, and Sam's seven years of radiation therapy hang over them like an ever-present dark cloud. While cancer memoirs often end with either the patient's death or joyous restoration to pre-cancer existence, here life is saved, but many failed attempts to regain potency (Viagra, a clumsy pump contraption, injections) are described in painful detail. Yet Karen Propp delivers a triumphant story, honestly depicting her adaptation to change and to the discovery of love and resilience's unexpected depths. Agent, Laureen Rowland. (Aug. 3)
