Almost Family: A Novel

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Liz Millanova has stage four cancer, a grown daughter who doesnt speak to her, and obsessive memories of a relationship that tore apart her marriage. She thinks of herself as someone whod rather die than sit through a support group, but now that she actually is going to die, she figures she might as well give it a go.

Mercys Thriving Survivors is a hospital-sponsored group held in a presumably less depressing location: a Nordstroms employee training lounge. There, Liz hits it off with two other patients, and the three unlikely friends decide to ditch the group and meet on their own. They call themselves the Oakland Mets, and their goal is to enjoy life while they can. Together, Dave, a gay Vietnam vet, Rhonda, a devout, nice woman whos hiding a family secret and finds peace in a gospel choir, and snarky Liz plan outings to hear jazz, enjoy nature, and tour Alcatraz. In the odd intimacy they form, Liz learns to open up and get close, acknowledge and let go of the dysfunction in her marriage, and repair her relationship with her daughter. They joined forces to have a good timebut what they wind up doing is helping one another come to grips with terminal cancer and resolve the unfinished business in their lives.

Author Bio

Ann Bancroft was an Army brat who settled in Sacramento as an adult after attending ten schools in seven cities and four states. As a reporter, she worked in the State Capitol bureaus of the San Francisco Chronicle and the Associated Press. An alumni of the Community of Writers, the Tomales Bay Writers Workshops, and Everwood Farmstead artist's residency, she has ghostwritten two nonfiction books and was the cowriter, with Father Dan Madigan, of Many Hands, Many Miracles. She's written personal essays for the former Open Salon and Cure Magazine, and her writing has appeared twice in A Year in Ink, the annual anthology of San Diego Writers, Ink. Almost Family is her debut novel, published at age seventy-one. Ann and her husband split their time between Sacramento and Coronado, California.