The Unwinding of the Miracle

Julie Yip-Williams was born blind in Vietnam and survived her grandmother's attempt to arrange her death as an infant. Her family fled the country by boat, and in the United States a surgery restored much of her sight. She grew up to graduate from Harvard Law School, marry, and raise two young daughters. Then, at 37, she was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. The Unwinding of the Miracle grew out of the blog she began after that diagnosis, written so her daughters would one day know their mother's voice. Yip-Williams moves between the story of her early life and the hard, ordinary work of dying, writing candidly about anger, marriage under strain, jealousy of the healthy, and the fierce love that drives her to leave something behind.