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The Luckiest Unlucky Couple

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What to expect

The story goes something like this: successful journalist and author, Alicia (Lisa), in her late 50s, is single and mostly happy but has given up on finding love again after her first marriage ended abruptly.
Her friends convince her to at least try Match.com, and she finds the love of her life. Then out of the blue, he is diagnosed with melanoma, which has traveled to his brain. Through immunotherapy, he gets cured. And through the process of his illness, she and his children---not especially close before---become a family. That is the first half of the book.

Not long after he is pronounced cured, she is diagnosed with lung cancer. That is the second half of the book, wherein she struggles with cancer, dying, surrendering to support, gets remarried, and ultimately finds deeper love for all things. The book not only details her emotional journey, it also contains a lot of useful information on cutting-edge immunotherapy techniques, and how to live in the moment when that is not your predisposition. The epilogue, written by her husband, shares life after Lisa's passing. In the appendix the couple shares helpful tips for patients and families wrestling with cancer.

Critics Review

In high school, Lisa was my boldest friend—curious, funny, bright and always up for life’s adventures. In this memoir she is just as real and fearless, meeting love, illness, and mortality with courage and honesty. Reading it feels like being with her again.
author of Radical Acceptance
Having edited her articles for 20-plus years, I knew Alicia Shepard was an extraordinary journalist and storyteller, but this memoir—inspirational, heartbreaking, useful, and at times (I have to say, because it’s her) funny—took my admiration to a new level. It’s her very best work, in a life that was already full of accolades and successes, a riveting testimony to an adventurous spirit, courage, strength, and ultimately love.
senior managing editor, Washingtonian magazine
It is quite touching, compelling and wise. I believe it will be of value to individuals battling cancer and their loved ones.
Deputy Director of the Lombardi Comprehensive Center at Georgetown University
Being a journalist in Afghanistan doesn’t automatically prepare you to deal with the news of metastatic melanoma in your partner’s brain. Or does it? Lisa shares with us a double crash course in cancer. And shows us how love can thrive in this personal journey of the luckiest unlucky couple.
co-founder, Living With Melanoma Support Group, Alexandria, VA
Part romance, part medical detective mystery, set amidst the war in Afghanistan and the chaos of Covid Washington. These two souls found each other and never let go. It has insights into today’s state of the art treatments for cancer. And for broken hearts. You are not likely to forget its message.
Washington correspondent Business Week, Knight-Ridder
A journalist at heart with a zest for life, Lisa Shepard left us far too soon. She also left us a heart-rending narrative of back-to-back battles with cancer, one triumphant, the other tragic. It is a story of courage, resilience and grace that is a testament to the human spirit — a compelling final chapter in her inspiring legacy.
winner of the Pulitzer Prize and AARP Purpose Prize and founder of the News Literacy Project
This is a deeply moving story of two adventurers, whose roller-coaster life together stretches from Afghanistan and the Middle East to Africa and suburban America. It will have you laughing even as your heart aches at the cruelty of Fate and the power of love. Beautifully written with passion, wit and honesty, The Luckiest Unlucky Couple is raw, poignant, and a joyous celebration of life. Read it and be inspired.
U.S. Ambassador Kelly Degnan (ret.)

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