by Joni Rodgers
Joni Rodgers lives in Texas, where big hair is a God-given right, as natural as Naugahyde, and as important as Elvis. But at age 32, Joni--a creative drama teacher and mother of two--was diagnosed with lymphoma and faced an aggressive course of chemo. "It's no fun being a bald girl in the Big Hair Capital of America," she discovered. "But life is still a joyful and hilarious thing--even when it has a little cancer in it." With the enormous ability to laugh at life (and herself) that got her through to remission, Joni recounts her journey through the Badlands of cancer--an affecting tale of industrial strength drugs, healing herbs, love, sex, prayer, kids, career, and the search for a wig that won't make her look like Betty Rubble.
"Memoirs of a cancer survivor with a delicious sense of humor and a well-defined sense of self...an upbeat epilogue celebrating life. Darkly comic, inspiring…" Kirkus Reviews
"Rodgers tells her story with wit and clarity...funny...heartbreaking...free-spirited...There are many other cancer survivor books, but this one stands out for its appeal to general biography readers." Library Journal
"Rodgers book will appeal to women, especially those who enjoy feel-good, strong-women-discovering-themselves memoirs. It's the stuff of book group discussions…" Publishers Weekly
Elizabeth Berg, author of Talk Before Sleep,
talks about BLBH
"I was sitting in my study finishing reading Bald in the Land of Big Hair when a friend came into the room. I looked up at her and pointed to the manuscript and said, "This is a very important book."
"What's it about?" she asked. And I told her it was about a really cool woman's journey through the badlands of cancer. That it was like reading an adventure story and a humor story and a love story and a tragedy and a deeply spiritual story all at once.
"So who's it for?" she asked.
And I said, "Everybody."
That's because this is not only a book about cancer, detailing with remarkable honesty every aspect of diagnosis and treatment, from being yelled at by your kids for throwing up again to facing your loss of sexuality. It's also a book about how to ground yourself in the life you're living, how to see with seeing eyes and hear with hearing ears. It's about how to let go of false concepts of beauty and of self, and start living a far richer, truer life than you might ever have imagined.
Reading this book -- which makes you laugh more than cry, I promise, and which has an ending that makes you want to stand up and cheer --is like being given the extraordinary insight that comes with catastrophic illness without having to endure the disease itself.
I say again, this is a very important book. Read it."
Order BLBH from Amazon.com
Visit author Joni Rodgers online
