Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life

Ephron, the younger sister of Nora Ephron and her writing and producing partner on films including You’ve Got Mail and Sleepless in Seattle, reads her emotional roller-coaster of a memoir with a relaxed, confidential tone. Ephron begins her tale in 2015 when her husband of 32 years is entering hospice care after a decade-long battle with prostate cancer. After he dies, she is left alone in their Greenwich Village apartment. Ephron was still mourning the loss of her force-of-nature sister Nora, who had died two years earlier after a secret six-year battle with leukemia. A year after her husband’s death, Ephron meets a widowed doctor who had briefly dated her when she was 18. Just when her life starts resembling a rom-com written by her and her sister, Ephron is diagnosed with the same cancer that felled her sister. Her only option is a bone marrow transplant that turns into a horrifying months-long hospitalization that leaves her depressed, in constant pain, and suicidal.