Nearly Departed: Adventures in Loss, Cancer, and Other Inconveniences

By the time she was thirty, Gila Pfeffer was the oldest living member of her family, with both of her parents dead from cancer. She underwent genetic testing and after learning that she carried the BRCA1 gene decided to undergo a double mastectomy. It wasn't a choice--she had to stay alive.

Set against Gila's Orthodox Jewish upbringing on Staten Island, this memoir follows her journey to break the cycle of death in her family. After becoming a reluctant expert on how to sit shiva, she transforms into an independent adult, falls in love, and becomes a mother before her life falls apart yet again.

Her double mastectomy reveals cancer already growing in one breast. After enduring eight rounds of chemo and the removal of her ovaries, she takes her last-ever dip in the mikvah waters as a bald, menopausal 35-year-old mother of four.

Drenched in Gila's dark humor honed over years of repeatedly surviving the worst, Nearly Departed is a story about thriving despite poor odds, balancing life in the secular world while remaining true to her faith, and leaving a better legacy for her children than the one she inherited.