"I am the daughter of a woman who died of breast cancer in her forties, the age I am now.and I am a woman who, at age 40, while in the eighth month of a first, much-desired and difficult-to-achieve pregnancy, discovered that I had breast cancer." PRAISE FOR GAYLE FELDMAN AND YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE YOUR MOTHER "THIS MEMOIR TELLS THE VALIANT AND DRAMATIC STORY of [Feldman's] struggle to survive not only for herself, but for her child.Feldman convincingly describes the distinctive nature of breast cancer--how a woman can feel betrayed by her body when something that defines femaleness can cause death.Though Feldman's story is special, her enterprising and lyrical writing style makes this memoir universal and vital." --New York Newsday "ADMIRABLE.REASSURING.MOVING.

" --The Washington Post Book World "[AN] UPLIFTING MEMOIR.[Feldman] is a lovely, modulated writer, capable of the understatement that is perhaps crucial to writing about this subject." --Los Angeles Times Book Review "FELDMAN WRITES POIGNANTLY AND BEAUTIFULLY." --The Philadelphia Inquirer "A DEEPLY MOVING AND ELEGANTLY WRITTEN STORY OF A HEROIC WOMAN who had to make a series of life-and-death decisions in the context of a grim family legacy and a child not yet born, and who did it with courage and grace. It will have great meaning not only to those women suddenly confronted with a breast cancer diagnosis but to anyone who has known the burden of living with a familial cancer threat. No reader can fail to be swept up by this powerful story." --Ruth Spear Cofounder, NABCO The National Alliance of Breast Cancer Organizations.