"Novella and poetry about breast cancer" would not have been at the top of my list, except that I trust Mary Ann Mohanraj to satisfy. And this book does. Though the subject is breast cancer, alternating the author's journalistic poems and a story that fictionalizes her experience, what we see is people learning to care about each other. Kate is a stranger blindsided by a diagnosis and is, after resisting it, supported by a new community, who she learns to care for in return.

If we were still in the pandemic, I would be recommending this as a restorative, but we still need this kind of reading every day.