Picasso's woman

the long version

On a windy January morning in 1991, Rosalind MacPhee discovered a lump in her right breast. When it turned out to be malignant, her various roles - poet, paramedic, mother, wife, emergency rescue worker, avid hiker - had to make way for another: a woman with breast cancer. Picasso's Woman is an intensely personal account of this experience. With a lean, ironic narrative style, Rosalind MacPhee chronicles how her diagnosis and treatment affected every part of her life. An outdoorswoman, she tells her story as an adventure, and like any good adventure, the book has its heartstopping moments as well as those of reverie and toughmindedness. She enlists her friends, a motley crew of colorful and often outrageous women, to help save her life. The result is an everywoman's drama of fear and courage, anger and laughter, loss and survival, and a celebration of the lives of women and their claims on one another.