The Middle Place is as compelling a memoir as I have read in recent memory. The book was a gift from a friend shortly after I had a bout with breast cancer earlier this year, so although my own experience with the dreaded C word was much less traumatic, Kelly Corrigan’s recollections about the fears and other overwhelming emotions that occur while going through the process rang so true. In addition to her own diagnosis, at about the same time, Corrigan’s father had a recurrence of bladder cancer, so she shares the emotions and experiences she had dealing with her father’s illness as well as her own. Corrigan is brutally honest and fascinatingly objective about her own follies and insecurities both in the present tense and in telling her life story. Alternating between current and past histories of herself and her family, Corrigan paints a vivid picture of why she is so close to her father and how each of the main “characters” in her story came to be who they are. No one is a saint, and no one is patently evil. This is a story of very human beings doing the best they can with the hand of cards they have been dealt. I loved every page of the book and recommend it very highly!