The Climb of My Life: A Miraculous Journey from the Edge of Death to the Victory of a Lifetime

Is cancer cure a matter of will? Diagnosis? Good doctors? Evans, who had them all, believes her indomitable will played a big part in her recovery, though she was given only a 15% chance of survival. On the fifth anniversary of her recovery, she celebrated by climbing Mount Aconcagua in the Andes. A type-A personality, she was both a successful sportswear designer and a lifelong sportswoman who had just discovered the thrills and chills of mountain climbing when she first felt the dreaded lump in her breast. Until then, she and her husband had enjoyed the good life in Sun Valley, Idaho. Several doctors they interviewed seemed too mechanical or too pessimistic. Finally, they found one who, while not understating the potentially lethal nature of her disease, offered a slim hope in an experimental bone-marrow transplant, adding that sometimes a strong will to live made a difference. Evans had the will and, regarding the disease as a challenge, underwent the painful treatments fearfully but with unswerving determination to survive. Here, she switches between detailed accounts of those treatments and narratives of her mountain-climbing efforts, drawing parallels between the two in a smoothly written, sometimes humorous inspirational account. (Oct.)