Almost Family: A Novel

by Ann Bancroft

Overview

Liz Millanova has stage four cancer, a grown daughter who doesn’t speak to her, and obsessive memories of a relationship that tore apart her marriage. She thinks of herself as someone who’d rather die than sit through a support group, but now that she actually is going to die, she figures she might as well give it a go.

Mercy’s Thriving Survivors is a hospital-sponsored group held in a presumably less depressing location: a Nordstrom’s employee training lounge. There, Liz hits it off with two other patients, and the three unlikely friends decide to ditch the group and meet on their own. They call themselves the Oakland Mets, and their goal is to enjoy life while they can. Together, Dave, a gay Vietnam vet, Rhonda, a devout, nice woman who’s hiding a family secret and finds peace in a gospel choir, and snarky Liz plan outings to hear jazz, enjoy nature, and tour Alcatraz. In the odd intimacy they form, Liz learns to open up and get close, acknowledge and let go of the dysfunction in her marriage, and repair her relationship with her daughter. They joined forces to have a good time—but what they wind up doing is helping one another come to grips with terminal cancer and resolve the unfinished business in their lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781647426675
Publisher:	She Writes Press
Publication date:	05/28/2024
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	296
Sales rank:	460,420
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Ann Bancroft was an Army brat who settled in Sacramento as an adult after attending ten schools in seven cities and four states. As a reporter, she worked in the State Capitol bureaus of the San Francisco Chronicle and the Associated Press. An alumni of the Community of Writers, the Tomales Bay Writers Workshops, and Everwood Farmstead artist’s residency, she has ghostwritten two nonfiction books and was the cowriter, with Father Dan Madigan, of Many Hands, Many Miracles. She’s written personal essays for the former Open Salon and Cure Magazine, and her writing has appeared twice in A Year in Ink, the annual anthology of San Diego Writers, Ink. Almost Family is her debut novel, published at age seventy-one. Ann and her husband split their time between Sacramento and Coronado, California.

Editorial Reviews

Almost Family by Ann Bancroft is most certainly a literary masterpiece. . . . There was so much to be felt, learned, experienced, and savored in this narrative. . . . Each character was beautifully, intelligently portrayed and intensely believable.”
—Readers’ Favorite, 5-star review

“It’s a story that follows a remarkable trajectory from loneliness and heartbreak to lasting love. An often-resonant narrative of adversity and friendship.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Almost Family is a book that comes right at the hard stuff with a whole lot of truth and even more humor. Ann Bancroft writes a beautiful story about love and the power of friendship to heal what the doctors can’t.”
—Jodi Angel, author of You Only Get Letters from Jail and Biggest Little Girl

“I found Ann Bancroft’s bracingly honest novel about three ordinary people wrestling with the end of life impossible to put down. Who would have guessed that dancing on the edge could be so much fun?”
—Hugh Delehanty, coauthor with Phil Jackson of the #1 New York Times bestseller Eleven Rings

From the Publisher

2024-01-18
Bancroft’s novel follows a middle-aged woman as she receives a cancer diagnosis, grows close to members of a support group, and learns about herself.

In Oakland, California in 2008, after marketing executive Liz Millanova leaves her alcoholic husband, she’s free to pursue a new relationship with her married boyfriend, Lyle. However, her new world is soon shattered when she receives a stage 1 breast cancer diagnosis that requires immediate surgery and treatment. Later, Lyle breaks up with her, and before long, she receives a stage 4 diagnosis of cancer that has spread to her bones. She finds a way to tell the terrible news to her estranged daughter, Marisa, and in her cancer support group, she connects with two other survivors, Rhonda and Dave. The trio become their own personal support group, which they call “the Oakland Mets.” After attending a baseball game, where they begin to truly bond, the three explore various parks, Alcatraz Island, and local clubs. As her relationship with her new friends deepens, Liz reflects on her own life and learns to love in a way she has never has before. Over the course of this accomplished novel, Bancroft, a cancer survivor herself, presents a realistic picture of multiple patients’ physical and emotional experiences. The work is also a fine story of platonic love, which is a relatively rare subject in fiction; the unfolding friendships are realistic and emotionally honest throughout, even when their excursions occasionally become lengthy. The main story is told from Liz’s perspective, but Bancroft presents a heartbreaking but beautiful afterword in the third person. It’s a story that follows a remarkable trajectory from loneliness and heartbreak to lasting love.

An often resonant narrative of adversity and friendship.

Kirkus Reviews