"Maggie O'Farrell's astonishing memoir of the near-death experiences that have punctuated her life. The childhood illness she was not expected to survive. A teenage yearning to escape that nearly ended in disaster. A terrifying encounter on a remote path. A mismanaged labor in an understaffed hospital. And, most terrifying of all, an ongoing, daily struggle to protect her daughter--for whom this book was written--from a medical condition that leaves her unimaginably vulnerable to myriad dangers. In taut, electrifying prose, O'Farrell captures how thin the membrane is between life and death--the strokes of luck and twists of fate that push us into or out of harm's way, and the accidents, happy and otherwise, that define our lives"--Dust jacket flap.
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