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Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life: A Memoir
The bestselling, beloved writer of romantic comedies like You've Got Mail tells her own late-in-life love story in her "resplendent memoir," complete with a tragic second act and joyous resolution (Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of The Good Left Undone).
Delia Ephron had struggled through several years of heartbreak. She'd lost her sister, Nora, and then her husband, Jerry, both to cancer. Several months after Jerry's death, she decided to make one small change in her life-she shut down his landline, which crashed her internet. She ended up in Verizon hell.
She channeled her grief the best way she knew: by writing a New York Times op-ed. The piece caught the attention of Peter, a Bay Area psychiatrist, who emailed her to commiserate. Recently widowed himself, he reminded her that they had shared a few dates fifty-four years before, set up by Nora. Delia did not remember him, but after several weeks of exchanging emails and sixties folk songs, he flew east to see her. They were crazy, utterly, in love.
But this was not a rom-com: four months later she was diagnosed with AML, a fierce leukemia.
In Left on Tenth, Delia Ephron enchants as she seesaws us between tears and laughter, navigating the suicidal lows of enduring cutting-edge treatment and the giddy highs of a second chance at love. With Peter and her close girlfriends by her side, with startling clarity, warmth, and honesty about facing death, Ephron invites us to join her team of warriors and become believers ourselves.
A "Most Anticipated Book of 2022" by TIME, Bustle, Parade, Publishers Weekly, Boston.com
A "Best Memoir of 2022" by Marie Claire
A "Best Memoir of April" by Vanity Fair
Delia Ephron had struggled through several years of heartbreak. She'd lost her sister, Nora, and then her husband, Jerry, both to cancer. Several months after Jerry's death, she decided to make one small change in her life-she shut down his landline, which crashed her internet. She ended up in Verizon hell.
She channeled her grief the best way she knew: by writing a New York Times op-ed. The piece caught the attention of Peter, a Bay Area psychiatrist, who emailed her to commiserate. Recently widowed himself, he reminded her that they had shared a few dates fifty-four years before, set up by Nora. Delia did not remember him, but after several weeks of exchanging emails and sixties folk songs, he flew east to see her. They were crazy, utterly, in love.
But this was not a rom-com: four months later she was diagnosed with AML, a fierce leukemia.
In Left on Tenth, Delia Ephron enchants as she seesaws us between tears and laughter, navigating the suicidal lows of enduring cutting-edge treatment and the giddy highs of a second chance at love. With Peter and her close girlfriends by her side, with startling clarity, warmth, and honesty about facing death, Ephron invites us to join her team of warriors and become believers ourselves.
A "Most Anticipated Book of 2022" by TIME, Bustle, Parade, Publishers Weekly, Boston.com
A "Best Memoir of 2022" by Marie Claire
A "Best Memoir of April" by Vanity Fair
Editorial Reviews
"Delia Ephron is the voice of our times and a master craftsman of the written word. If you are looking for a book that tells you the truth about love, marriage, friendship, family, creativity, loss, redemption and your internet provider, look no further. Ephron soars on the page, and takes us with her. A resplendent memoir, Delia style."―Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of The Good Left Undone
"Delia Ephron's stunning Left on Tenth will make you believe in love again, and also in miracles. And it's so very, very funny."―Sarah Dunn, author of The Arrangements
"Delia masterfully and hilariously reminds us that there is always more life to be found just around the corner. A powerful, beautiful, life affirming testament to hope and meaning in the darkest hour. Somehow it felt like the answers to all of the big questions were immediately lurking in the text, and like any decent existentialist and searcher, I couldn't put it down and finished it in one sitting."
―Natasha Lyonne, writer, director, actor
"Oh, huge-hearted Delia Ephron! I loved this book. It's a memoir about grief and illness, but it's also basically a love letter to her people, and it's a gorgeous one. Because here is someone who chooses joy over and over again-who chooses friendship and love, like a fountain of gratitude that turns despair into a glittery, rainbow-scattering spray of light. Her lucky friends! Forgive yourself for wishing you were one of them."―Catherine Newman, author of Catastrophic Happiness: Finding Joy in Childhood's Messy Years
"Ephron's memoir is a heart-wrenching tale of second chances at life and love."―TIME Magazine
"A fun and rewarding read."
―Boston.com
"[A] straight-out-of-a-movie memoir."―Parade
"Radiant…readers will be swept away by this triumphant story."―Publishers Weekly
"Only someone with a heart of stone could resist the charms of Delia Ephron's tender, moving story of late-life love and illness. Ephron writes with singular transparency of her treatment for leukemia-the same disease that killed her sister seven years earlier-and the unbearable terror and pain she suffered. But Ephron is at heart...
"Delia Ephron's stunning Left on Tenth will make you believe in love again, and also in miracles. And it's so very, very funny."―Sarah Dunn, author of The Arrangements
"Delia masterfully and hilariously reminds us that there is always more life to be found just around the corner. A powerful, beautiful, life affirming testament to hope and meaning in the darkest hour. Somehow it felt like the answers to all of the big questions were immediately lurking in the text, and like any decent existentialist and searcher, I couldn't put it down and finished it in one sitting."
―Natasha Lyonne, writer, director, actor
"Oh, huge-hearted Delia Ephron! I loved this book. It's a memoir about grief and illness, but it's also basically a love letter to her people, and it's a gorgeous one. Because here is someone who chooses joy over and over again-who chooses friendship and love, like a fountain of gratitude that turns despair into a glittery, rainbow-scattering spray of light. Her lucky friends! Forgive yourself for wishing you were one of them."―Catherine Newman, author of Catastrophic Happiness: Finding Joy in Childhood's Messy Years
"Ephron's memoir is a heart-wrenching tale of second chances at life and love."―TIME Magazine
"A fun and rewarding read."
―Boston.com
"[A] straight-out-of-a-movie memoir."―Parade
"Radiant…readers will be swept away by this triumphant story."―Publishers Weekly
"Only someone with a heart of stone could resist the charms of Delia Ephron's tender, moving story of late-life love and illness. Ephron writes with singular transparency of her treatment for leukemia-the same disease that killed her sister seven years earlier-and the unbearable terror and pain she suffered. But Ephron is at heart...
Readers Top Reviews
Elsie Marina
An amazing book about hope, life and love. I read it in two sessions and will read it again. Delia is an inspiration.
Pageturner in NYC
Ephron's beautifully controlled, eloquent and moving memoir of illness, death and the possibility of finding love later in life, is an emotional rollercoaster of a book. It begins in 2015 when she was 71. After a decade-long battle with prostate cancer, her husband of thirty-two years was entering hospice care. "He was my true home," she writes. "My first safe place." When he dies, she is left alone in their Tenth Street apartment in Greenwich Village. Two years earlier, her sister Nora Ephron, had died after a six-year secret fight with acute myelogenous leukemia (AML). Delia had lived through more than a decade of dealing with two family members' chronic illnesses and death. A year after her husband's death, she reconnects with a widowed doctor Nora had set her up on a date with when she was eighteen. They quickly fall in love. Her life is suddenly like a rom-com script written by Nora and Delia Ephron. But then, Delia is diagnosed with AML. She undergoes chemotherapy but her remission lasts only eight months. A bone marrow transplant is her only option but her doctor says her survival rate is twenty percent. Her grueling and horrifying months-long hospitalization leaves her depleted, severely depressed and suicidal. The fact that she does indeed recover is remarkably uplifting and should give hope to others battling diseases. The fact that Ephron doesn't portray herself as an ideal patient ratchets-up reader empathy and adds tremendous power to her brutally honest and moving memoir of her long battle with a very aggressive cancer. Ephron's emotionally raw and eloquent memoir of battling a very aggressive leukemia is an emotional workout that miraculously has a well-earned happy ending.
Judy Liautaud
Delia has a way with words that is succinct but loaded with meaning. So well crafted. Reading Delia's journey with leukemia and the transplant made me so glad and appreciative of my health. Beautifully uplifting story of love, friendship, and recovery from death's door.
B. Bell
My sister died from leukemia in 1977. Before these methods were in place for curing. I was on the edge of my seat and hoping for a cure. Well written. Love story also. I highly recommend this book.
