“Delia Ephron had struggled through several years of heartbreak. She’d lost her sister Nora and then her husband, Jerry, both to cancer. Several months after Jerry’s death, she decided to make one small change to her life - she shut down his landline, which crashed her internet. She ended up in Verizon hell.”
I’m Betty Martin with "Martin’s Must Reads" and that’s an excerpt from the jacket of Delia Ephron’s memoir Left On Tenth: A Second Chance at Life. Delia is best known as a writer of memorable romantic comedies like You’ve Got Mail but she’s also a journalist and a book author.
Her Verizon hell led to a published piece in the New York Times that was read by Peter who lived on the other side of the country and someone she dated a few times when she was a young adult. They began corresponding, then calling and finally dating in person. And at age 72, they fell in love and began to talk about marriage.
In the middle of this romantic bliss, Delia is diagnosed with the same type of leukemia that killed her sister. Delia is fortunate to find just the right specialists who are willing to try an experimental drug and bone marrow transplant procedure that has a twenty percent chance of curing her. The cure almost kills her before it cures her.
I’m not spoiling the ending for you because if you experience this book as an audiobook, as I did, Delia is the reader. The book is a testament to the incredible friends that helped her survive this very hard chapter of her life.
If you’ve ever experienced a hard medical chapter in your own life or know someone who has, then you must read Left On Tenth by Delia Ephron. It’s a true story of triumph over adversity.
