By: Gila Pfeffer
ISBN: 978-1891011627
The Experiment, 2024
A sharp, funny, and heartfelt memoir of losing both parents to cancer and the daring choices Gila Pfeffer made to avoid the same early demise
By the time she was thirty, Gila Pfeffer was the oldest living member of her family, having lost her mother to breast cancer and her father to colon cancer. A simple blood test confirmed she carried the BRCA1 gene—which put her at high risk of developing cancer herself. Determined to break the cycle of early death in her family, Gila decides to undergo an elective double mastectomy.
This memoir follows her journey as she becomes a reluctant expert on how to sit shiva, grows up, falls in love, and enters motherhood, before her life is derailed yet again. Her double mastectomy reveals cancer already growing in one breast.
After enduring eight rounds of chemo and the removal of her ovaries, she takes her last-ever dip in the mikvah waters as a bald, menopausal, thirty-five-year-old mother of four. With chutzpah honed over years of repeatedly surviving the worst, she manages to save her own life.
Drenched in Gila’s dark humor, Nearly Departed is a story about thriving against the odds, committing to what’s important, and leaving a better legacy than the one you inherited.
About the Author
Gila Pfeffer is a Jewish American humor writer and essayist who harnesses the power of laughter to combat adversity. She is the author of the reluctantly inspirational memoir Nearly Departed: Adventures In Loss, Cancer, and Other Inconveniences. Her work includes the widely shared McSweeney’s piece “An Open Letter to Tiffany & Co. About Their Advertising Campaign for the Ring That Helps Women Remember They Survived Cancer.” Gila is a fifteen year breast cancer previvor and survivor. Her “Feel It on the First” campaign uses tongue-in-cheek photo and video reminders to prioritize breast health and has directly led to earlier diagnoses and treatment for some very grateful women. She only recently became comfortable admitting she’s from Staten Island, and currently splits her time between London, New York City, and Instagram. Her name is pronounced like “Hava-nagila.”
To learn more about Gila Pfeffer and her work, please see www.gilapfeffer.com