The Unwinding of the Miracle The Unwinding of the Miracle

The Unwinding of the Miracle

A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes After

    • 4.4 • 361 Ratings
    • $9.99
    • $9.99

Publisher Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Read with Jenna Book Club Pick as Featured on Today • As a young mother facing a terminal diagnosis, Julie Yip-Williams began to write her story, a story like no other. What began as the chronicle of an imminent and early death became something much more—a powerful exhortation to the living.

“An exquisitely moving portrait of the daily stuff of life.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)


NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review Time Real Simple • Good Housekeeping

That Julie Yip-Williams survived infancy was a miracle. Born blind in Vietnam, she narrowly escaped euthanasia at the hands of her grandmother, only to flee with her family the political upheaval of her country in the late 1970s. Loaded into a rickety boat with three hundred other refugees, Julie made it to Hong Kong and, ultimately, America, where a surgeon at UCLA gave her partial sight. She would go on to become a Harvard-educated lawyer, with a husband, a family, and a life she had once assumed would be impossible. Then, at age thirty-seven, with two little girls at home, Julie was diagnosed with terminal metastatic colon cancer, and a different journey began.

The Unwinding of the Miracle is the story of a vigorous life refracted through the prism of imminent death. When she was first diagnosed, Julie Yip-Williams sought clarity and guidance through the experience and, finding none, began to write her way through it—a chronicle that grew beyond her imagining. Motherhood, marriage, the immigrant experience, ambition, love, wanderlust, tennis, fortune-tellers, grief, reincarnation, jealousy, comfort, pain, the marvel of the body in full rebellion—this book is as sprawling and majestic as the life it records. It is inspiring and instructive, delightful and shattering. It is a book of indelible moments, seared deep—an incomparable guide to living vividly by facing hard truths consciously.

With humor, bracing honesty, and the cleansing power of well-deployed anger, Julie Yip-Williams set the stage for her lasting legacy and one final miracle: the story of her life.

Praise for The Unwinding of the Miracle

“Everything worth understanding and holding on to is in this book. . . . A miracle indeed.”—Kelly Corrigan, New York Times bestselling author

“A beautifully written, moving, and compassionate chronicle that deserves to be read and absorbed widely.”—Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies

GENRE
Biographies & Memoirs
RELEASED
2019
February 5
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
336
Pages
PUBLISHER
Random House Publishing Group
SELLER
Penguin Random House LLC
SIZE
9.4
MB

Customer Reviews

wordymel ,

Medicine for my soul

This book came to me at such a perfect time. I didn’t even realize I needed it, either. Fortunately, there is no one in my life who is suffering from cancer, but the lessons Julie can teach us all in this book far exceed the limits of only those affected by cancer. I will cherish the lessons I’ve learned from Julie forever. She has been an an inspiration to me.

susannahermana ,

Moving, relevant and incisive memoir

Truly an inspiring memoir; she intimately details her gut-wrenching battle with cancer and ultimately, conveys her courageous understanding of the inevitable.

Mimi 2 Cody ,

The Unwinding of the Miracle

I started this book the day before I had a routine colonoscopy not knowing what the book was about. This story actually held me keep it together through the procedure and another one six days later to remove a large benign growth. A remarkable and inspiring story. RIP, Julie.

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