The Woman Said Yes: Encounters with Life and Death: Memoirs

by Jessamyn West

Book Overview

In a memoir filled with compassion and deep resolve, West celebrates the lives of three women-her strong Quaker mother, her beloved and courageous sister, and herself-and gives personal insight into her own battle to survive tuberculosis.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 015198400X
• ISBN13: 9780151984008
• Release Date: January 1976
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P
• Length: 180 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.

Customer Reviews

POWERFUL MEMOIR FROM A SPLENDID AUTHOR

This memoir left me a bit on the depressed side with it's ending, but on the other hand deserved 5 stars due to the excellent writing that went into the stories. It is actually 2 stories in one. One is about Jessamyn West's own battle to live, and through the help of her mother, Grace, when doctors had given up, she was nursed at home back to health from TB. Her sister, later, years after their mother's death, developed cancer and in the end asked Jessamyn to be with her to her end. Much of the second story, or part, has to do with the plot of suicide, which Jessamyn was aware of and actually assisted in. The act was known to only 3 living people...well, until the book was published. West died in 1984. This story at one point gives hope and encouragement to severely ill people, and than at other times, seems like it can offer no hope at all but death. But the story is written in a way that you can't put it down. Perhaps it is a book of courage in spite of obstacles. Perhaps it's just a personal tribute by West to her mother and sister and her relationship with those two ladies she loved. It's not all happy and cheery, but it is a book you will remember. West was born in Indiana in a Quaker family. Many of her great books were about the Quaker life. Several were made into film. "The Friendly Persuasion." "Except for Me and Thee", the sequel to "The Friendly Persuasion", was adapted into a 1975 television movie. She was a second cousin of President Nixon. Her book, "The Massacre at Fall Creek" tells of actual events of central Indiana in 1824, when five men were tried for the murder of Native American Indians (first time in the USA).