Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

In the summer after college graduation, Suleika Jaouad was preparing to enter adulthood. She had fallen in love, moved to Paris, and dreamed of becoming a war correspondent. At twenty-three, she was diagnosed with leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. She lost her job, apartment, and independence, spending the next four years largely in a hospital bed while writing a column for The New York Times. She underwent multiple rounds of chemotherapy, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant. When doctors declared her cured, Jaouad discovered that survival was only the beginning of healing. After 1,500 days focused solely on staying alive, she faced a new challenge: learning how to live again. She embarked on a 100-day, 15,000-mile road trip across the country with Oscar, a terrier mutt, to meet strangers who had written to her during her hospitalization—including a teenage cancer survivor, a grieving teacher, and a death-row inmate. Through these encounters, she explored what it means to recover and reenter the world, discovering that the boundary between sickness and wellness is fluid and that most people move between these states throughout their lives.