“Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick.” Susan Sontag

The title comes from an idea that struck Jaouad from Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor: Whether it was because of what the book promised or my own hopes, I wanted more of the story about how she learned to live after her cancer. The Kingdom of the Well and the Kingdom of the Sick I read an advanced reader ebook, so I couldn’t tell physically how much of the story was focused on her cancer and treatment and how much was focused on her road trip, but it seemed like the majority of the story was focused on her illness and treatment. But, that story doesn’t start until much later in the book after her discovery, diagnosis and almost four years of treatment for leukemia.

She recalled visiting her parents in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., about a week into the expedition: “My dad explained to me how, if you lean forward and look in the mirror, you can notice your blind spots.The cover features a picture of a woman, possibly her, and a dog sitting on a VW type bus and the description stated something about the road trip she took after her cancer diagnosis and treatment. Jaoaud’s nearest and dearest understood that there was no talking her out of her journey once her mind was made up, although some worried about her safety since she’d only had her driver’s license for a month. I’m always interested in traveling to where the silence is, so once I detected it, I knew that would be something that I wanted to interrogate.” There was this strange omertà of silence that seemed to enshroud survivorship. “But I didn’t feel excited I didn’t feel done. “I felt like I should be living some version of the heroic journey I’d been bombarded with,” she said in a phone interview. The idea for the road trip and the memoir arrived when Jaouad found herself at a crossroads.

“ Between Two Kingdoms” drives home the fact that, where cancer is concerned, it takes an empire. By now, we all know it takes a village (albeit a socially distanced one) to endure illness, isolation and fear. These readers have been moved by Jaouad’s story of surviving cancer and then taking a 15,000-mile road trip to visit people - many of them strangers - who responded to the New York Times blog where she chronicled her experience as a young adult facing her own mortality. ROAD WARRIOR In the month since the publication of her memoir, “ Between Two Kingdoms,” which just spent three weeks on the hardcover nonfiction list, Suleika Jaoaud has heard from a number of individuals she didn’t expect to be in touch with - including her fourth grade teacher a California oncologist who was a fellow at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City when Jaoaud was diagnosed with leukemia at the age of 22 and a lawyer offering counsel to a Texas prisoner Jaouad writes about in the book.

Book review between two kingdoms