Resilience

By Elizabeth Edwards

Elizabeth Edwards is a remarkable woman who has certainly had more than her fair share of life's roller-coaster highs and lows. Reading her latest book, Resilience, is both painful and rewarding -- which, given the circumstances, is a fair mix.

Edwards' life brings to mind the saying "For those to whom much is given, much will be required." While much of her life has been filled with the stuff so many of us only dream about or envy, her personal trials and tribulations far outweigh any of the glamour, prestige or power she has experienced.

Resilience touches on the death of her father, the loss of her son Wade, her breast cancer diagnoses in 2004 and again in 2007 -- and to some extent, her husband John's infidelity.

Elizabeth's candid discussion of her cancer's recurrence provides a unique insight into dealing with the emotions and fear this elicits, but it also addresses the reality of a life filled with uncertainty, treatments and ultimately the knowledge that at some point breast cancer will take her life.

Regardless of her intentions, Resilience is a difficult read because it's nearly impossible not to feel voyeuristic when dealing with subject matter that is so intimate and uncomfortable. Edwards insists this book wasn't written out of spite or revenge for her husband's affair or the possibility that he has an out-of-wedlock child with his mistress. "If I wanted to write an angry, vindictive book, it's not that I don't know how," she says. "I know how to write that. That's a really easy book." Instead, she says, she was trying to write in a "nonjudgmental, accurate way" about "all these yucky things that have happened to me." She does admit, though, that she didn't say things in the most "protective way" that she could have, but rather in the most "representative" way.

While living her life under the microscope of public opinion, Edwards tells readers: "I cannot be as resilient as Gordon Livingston or Rose Kennedy, both of whom buried too many of their children. I cannot be as strong and healthy as Lance Armstrong, who pushed his body over mountains after cancer. I cannot be as beautiful as Christie Brinkley, who faced her husband's indiscretions, too. I can only be what I am capable of being."

Perhaps that is the sentiment she conveys best in this book.