Best-selling author Pia de Jong's vivid memoir about her newborn daughter's battle with leukemia and the startling decision that led to her recovery.
On a still summer night in a seventeenth-century canal house in Amsterdam's old quarter, Pia de Jong gives birth to a delicate, bright-eyed baby girl with a riddle on her back?a pale blue spot that soon multiplies. In a bare, air-conditioned hospital room, a doctor reveals the devastating answer: it is a rare and deadly form of leukemia, often treated with chemotherapy, a cure nearly as dangerous to a newborn as the disease itself.
Pia and her husband Robbert make an intuitive decision. They do not subject Charlotte to chemotherapy; they bring her home. They transform their canal house into a sanctuary where Charlotte can live surrounded by love and strength, where Pia can give her a chance to live. In return, Charlotte gives her mother the greatest gift of all: purpose.
Saving Charlotte is the story of a daughter's fight to survive, and of a mother's fight to live a life of passion and meaning alongside her.
Autorentext
Pia de Jong is a best-selling novelist and a regular contributor to the Washington Post. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey, with her husband Robbert Dijkgraaf, director of the Institute for Advanced Study, and their three children, including Charlotte.