OPTIMAL DISTANCE, A Divided Life

OPTIMAL DISTANCE, A Divided Life, Part Two, begins with the author’s decision to take a second chance on mid-life motherhood and ends with her preparations for death at age seventy-five. After being diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer, Joan Carol Lieberman writes with unusual self-awareness about her fear of death and her relationships with other mothers suffering from the same disease. An ambivalent agnostic, the author was deeply affected by a metaphysical experience with a bear and a sacrificial swan on the shores of Yellowstone Lake, as well as by increasing incidents of synchroneity and prescient dreams as she struggles to survive. When treatment side-effects cause kidney failure and put her on dialysis, she finds herself  writing to Osama bin Laden about the similarities between Mormonism and his religious beliefs as a Sunni Muslim. This is an unusually complex autobiography– one that explores the most important questions we each face about our relationships, our spiritual beliefs, and our inevitable mortality. This luminous book will make readers wish Joan Carol Lieberman had another life to live and more stories to tell.