On December 26, 2005, with his adult children and grandchildren still gathered in for the holiday, Walter Wangerin Jr. discovered a lump in his neck that proved to be a malignant tumor, metastasized from his lung.

Three weeks later, he wrote the first of 22 letters --- updating friends on his prognoses and treatments, his physical and spiritual health, and his reflections on life in the shadow of death --- most of them sent out over 18 months. (A few are marked as being “never sent.”) These are missives a younger writer might have posted on a blog site. I infer that he wrote them on a typewriter, engaging an assistant to format them for an email outbox. Halfway through the collection, he mentions the possibility of publication. (In the second half, his writing seems a little less intimate, as if he’s consciously aware of his potential readership.) Indeed, the letters are presented here for a wider audience, interspersed with short meditations --- six by his own hand, a seventh by poet Robert Siegel.

In the prologue he explains, “I’ll tell my story step-by-step from within the ongoing experience. I needn’t draw from memory.” Especially in the first half, that immediacy is evident. What will the doctor say tomorrow? How will he respond to this pain --- or this pain killer? “I contain pain,” he writes. And “I am sincerely grateful that my adventure waited until there were therapies and drugs to serve this sort of thing [pain]” --- though it seems much of the pain is caused by curative therapies. How does this disease change his relationship with his wife, his grandchildren, and his garden? The book works because Wangerin is such a good writer. He draws us into his private life, not as voyeurs but as fellow travelers.

Some of Wangerin’s more interesting comments have to do with the language we use about cancer: we battle against it. “Cancer really isn’t an issue of defeat or victory. We are all going to die.” He goes on to talk of blessings received as a result of his cancer. “Surely it’s high Time --- isn’t it? --- that we pay as much attention to the blessings of a long affliction as we do to the pain for which we curse it.” He also interestingly works with words, turning slowth --- some combination of slow and growth --- into a noun that describes benefits of facing daily life at a reduced pace, not by choice but by forced circumstance.

Would I recommend this to a person of faith who has metastasized cancer? Yes, if that person has a solid familial network, for that is where Wangerin gains much of his focus and strength. The book ends with a two-line postscript, in which Wangerin states that his health was “stable” in April 2008. That’s nearly 20 months before publication in early 2010. Though strangers to him, readers invited into his life would have welcomed a well-deserved, press-time update.

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