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Sign up todayCancer Crossings
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Learn moreWhen Eric Wendel was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in 1966, the survival rate was less than 10 percent. Today, it is 90 percent. Even as politicians call for a “Cancer Moonshot,” this accomplishment remains a pinnacle in cancer research.
The author’s daughter, then a medical student at Georgetown Medical School, told her father about this amazing success story. Tim Wendel soon discovered that many of the doctors at the forefront of this effort cared for his brother at Roswell Park in Buffalo, New York. Wendel went in search of this extraordinary group, interviewing Lucius Sinks, James Holland, Donald Pinkel, and others in the field. If there were a Mount Rushmore for cancer research, they would be on it.
Despite being ostracized by their medical peers, these doctors developed modern-day chemotherapy practices and invented the blood centrifuge machine, helping thousands of children live longer lives. Part family memoir and part medical narrative, Cancer Crossings explores how the Wendel family found the courage to move ahead with their lives. They learned to sail on Lake Ontario, cruising across miles of open water together, even as the campaign against cancer changed their lives forever.
Tim Wendel is writer-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University. His nonfiction books include Summer of ’68: The Season That Changed Baseball, and America, Forever and High Heat: The Secret History of the Fastball and the Improbable Search for the Fastest Pitcher of All Time. His fiction includes Castro’s Curveball. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, National Geographic Traveler, USA Weekend, GQ, and Esquire.
Tim Wendel is writer-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University. His nonfiction books include Summer of ’68: The Season That Changed Baseball, and America, Forever and High Heat: The Secret History of the Fastball and the Improbable Search for the Fastest Pitcher of All Time. His fiction includes Castro’s Curveball. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, National Geographic Traveler, USA Weekend, GQ, and Esquire.
Reviews
“For as long as I have followed his work, Tim Wendel has always chosen a distinct path of intimate stories within big topics, those subjects revealed by his superb way of getting at the particular. This riveting book—which will ring familiar with too many of us—is no different. Bravo!”
“Both informative and compassionate, Wendel’s book celebrates his brother’s life and serves as a testament to the commitment of doctors who went above and beyond expectations to transform a death sentence into a survivable disease. A sensitive and thoughtful excavation of a painful period in the author’s life.”
“It’s amazing when an author can plumb the pain of his personal past and find in it a story—Cancer Crossings—of historical significance. Tim Wendel’s younger brother died of leukemia in the mid-70s. Through deep reporting (which was spurred by his daughter, a young physician), he found that the doctors who treated his brother were the very men who, at the very time, were pioneering the treatment of leukemia that virtually robbed the disease of its terrible, killing power.”
“Few families have had their stories told as crisply and compassionately as Tim Wendel tells his in The Cancer Crossings. Buttressed by his years as a journalist, Wendel weaves both the skill of an investigative reporter with the artfulness and honesty of a memoirist. The result is a work that is as instructive as it is heartbreaking.”
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