Second Life

She was twenty-seven years old, beautiful, happily married and the mother of two small children. Everything seemed perfect, except that she felt awful. And then one day, while walking down New York's 57th Street, she was taken by a terrible fit of coughing. This was the beginning of a journey Stephani Cook would take to the edge of death and back.

While doctors explore her body to determine her illness, Stephani fights to retain some sense of human dignity. After a radical hysterectomy, open heart surgery, excruciatingly painful tests and probes, the doctors discover that what she has had for two years is cancer, a diagnosis that could have been learned from a simple urinalysis.

Powerfully told, SECOND LIFE is not a simple story of remission and recuperation. It is an odyssey of countless new beginnings in which Stephani Cook peels away the layers of guilt, fear and self-deprecation and discovers that death may not be as traumatic as the responsibility for rebuilding her life.

This true story of a woman's struggle for self-determination is shattering and provocative in its treatment of the issues that still remain unsolved concerning women in relation to themselves and others---issues of loving, dependency and autonomy---especially in their conflicted attraction to men. Brilliantly written, totally hones, and ultimately heroic, it is a book in which the author shares her own triumphant story of learning to cherish, not mere existence, but "life".