The Encore: A Memoir in Three Acts

In this inspiring memoir about faith, music, love, and illness, soprano Tillemann-Dick recounts the challenges of living with a disease that compromises her lungs even as she performs on the world stage as a top-selling Billboard classical artist. In 2004, 21-year-old Tillemann-Dick was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension, a devastating disease that, in the absence of a lung transplant, kills nearly 70% of patients within the first five years of diagnosis. Tillemann-Dick transforms her experience into a moving opera. The emergency room becomes an “avant-garde production” of Lucia di Lammermoor with its “chorus of beeps and buzzers, all underscored by the percussive expletives of the drunkard on the other side of the curtain.” Amid the “horrific, minimalist score” of the ICU, Tillemann-Dick recovered from a double lung transplant, fighting to regain her voice and her independence. That first lung transplant failed, and she had her second transplant three years later. Nevertheless, she continued to live her dream life, singing with her transplanted lungs. She notes early on, “I’m not afraid of death. I’m afraid of not living the life I’m meant to live.” This is a moving memoir, and in it Tillemann-Dick shares her life of wonder, opera, and love. (Oct.)