Framing the Dialogue

Author Bruce Feiler shares his “lost year” in which he struggles to live through a rare and deadly form of bone cancer.   A full years lost from diagnosis by his doctor who noticed something unusual in one of his tests, months of chemotherapy, followed by extensive surgery and rehabilitation, followed again by chemo was his lost year. 

His lost year is his personal story of how he faces the fact that should cancer win, his twin three year old daughters are unlikely to remember him. 

“Cancer, I have found, is a passport to intimacy.  It’s an invitation – maybe even a mandate – to enter the most vital, frightening, and sensitive human arenas.”

His journey included his need to identify and recruit The Council of Dads; six men from his life that, together, could give guidance to his daughters.  Feiler shares his experiences with his friends and how each of them, in their own way, will give voice to these young girls…his voice.

“When assembling this council I have been reminded of the great paradox of parenting:  Even as we come to feel we can’t live without you, our primary job is to prepare you to live without us.  Our task, in a sense, is to make ourselves obsolete.  As babies, you arrive entirely dependent; we then spend the coming decades trying to make you independent, so you can thrive on your own, without us.”

Though a dire thing to face and read about, Council is a fascinating look at a world each of us hopes never to have to face.