Delia Ephron is also a chronicler of her life, but one less inclined to focus on the dark side — even when the story is a tough one, as hers initially appears. A lifelong writer of screenplays, essays, novels (blessed and cursed to have followed on the heels of her sister Nora Ephron, with whom she collaborated on the quintessential ’90s romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail), Delia found the source material for her new work from the worst possible series of losses.

As titles go, it’s an impressive combination of witty, sad and memorable — just like the book itself.

In chapters that can be as terse as half a page, Left on Tenth chronicles a descent into the abyss and an arduous climb back up and out. Ms. Ephron writes with piercing acuity about her new identity—cancer patient—and its accoutrements ...It says everything good about Ms. Ephron that she has lots of friends, wonderful supportive friends. But since they are referred to only by their first names...they become a confusing tangle to the reader.

The funny, poignant and sometimes magical memoir is an open-eyed look at later life and what Ephron calls the left turns that can be perilous or wonderous.

... beautifully measured, eloquent and moving.

Ephron’s harrowing account of coping with multiple, agonizing courses of treatment rivals that of any against-all-odds, true-adventure memoir. Her endurance is nothing short of mind boggling, her survival to tell the tale even more miraculous. Simultaneously spiritually uplifting and emotionally draining, Ephron’s account of triumphing over life’s greatest challenges is itself a tour de force..

Ephron will make readers feel, and with her short sentences and matter-of-fact voice, she’ll make readers laugh, swoon, cringe, and cry, sometimes all within the same section of writing.

Ephron balances profound sorrow with unconditional love in this radiant account of the 'many left turns, some perilous, some wondrous' that her life took following her husband’s death.

Many readers’ only complaint will be that Ephron includes in full more of those emails than is strictly necessary.