“A uniquely poetic memoir with dark humor and profound insights.’” - Kirkus Reviews

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, USA, December 22, 2019 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Suzanne Samples unflinchingly tells a story of a woman confronting death and terminal brain cancer at age 36, with laughter, heartbreak, and honesty in her debut book, Frontal Matter: Glue Gone Wild. Her moving memoir was just selected as an Indie Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews.

Out of nowhere, just before Christmas, Suzanne, a Type I diabetic, suffers a leg seizure and is suddenly thrust into a hospital. She is told she has a frontal lobe glioblastoma multiforme. She is then told she may have a year left. That was two years ago.

The North Carolina English professor used journaling to keep herself sane as she undergoes a long road to recovery, culminating in the publication of her book by Running Wild Press ($24.99, 254 pages, Trade Paperback, ISBN: 978-1-947041-24-0). “Writing is what saved me from sinking into a deep depression while I was in the hospital,” she says.
“Through this rollercoaster experience, I am learning about loss, loneliness, and death, but readers may learn about life and the power of living each day as a gift.”

Frontal Matter takes us along the expected path of how one handles a diagnosis of death, reacts to surgery, deals with the challenges of physical therapy, lives under a cloud of uncertainty, and stomachs chemo and radiation. But what’s different about Suzanne’s story is how she tells it.

She just lets us look through her eyes, unfiltered, of what it would be like to be in her unenviable situation. Suzanne lays out every moment – big, small, and microscopic – and lets us feel her fears, shortcomings, curiosity, relief, shame, helplessness, and moments of desire. Most of all, amidst the haze of what happens to her, we see how she truly views her world with clarity, honesty and rawness.

Suzanne shares with us:
Exactly what runs through one’s mind when life is turned upside-down.
How she lives knowing the odds of staving off death are low.
How terminal cancer can bring family together and sometimes friends and lovers apart.
An appreciation for simple, plain and ordinary things in the face of trauma.
A warning to women in their 30s: this can happen to anyone so grab hold of life now!
What it was like to lose the ability to walk and how relearning to walk felt like being reborn.
The strain on a relationship when someone receives a terminal diagnosis.
How she uses a writing style of short sentences, repetition, simple language, and stark honesty to convey a powerful message.

Frontal Matter is at times a fun, funny, and heart-breaking, a keep -it-real memoir of a woman’s fight against the Goliath of cancer. It’s charming, emotional, and full of cuss words. She writes with the reckless freedom of a woman who doesn’t have a fear of repercussions for speaking her mind, who doesn’t have to apologize for the way things are, and who can be needy but chooses not to be a burden. She has come to grips with death, and in the process, readers learn more about life – and how to live it.

About The Author: Suzanne teaches English at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. She was diagnosed with a frontal lobe gliobastoma multiforme at 36. She loves roller derby and lives on the side of a mountain with her pets Gatsby, Prufrock, and Duffles. She received a Ph.D in Victorian Literature from Auburn university and an MA and BA in English from Marshall University. She was nominated for the Hope Award from the organization, End Brain Cancer. Her work has been published in Firewords, Cardinal Sons, Atlas + Alice, Fiction Weekly, The Alarmist, and other publications.

“There is a chance I will write this and I will live. There is a greater chance I will write this and I will die a few months later. I have a grade IV glioblastoma in the left frontal lobe of my brain.
Brain. Fucking. Cancer. I have accepted this, maybe. I have understood this, potentially. I have sucked my secrets onto these pages and given you a glimpse at my surprise brain cancer, my likely end.”
--Excerpted from Frontal Matter

“Frontal Matter, like all great memoirs, combine the writer’s urgent need to tell her story with a keen awareness of why the world needs to hear it. In this beautifully written book, Suzanne Samples confronts not only disease and mortality, but friendship, love, identity, and an artist’s struggle to create lasting work. The book is moving and wise, with unexpected moments of clever humor.”
--Sarah Perry, acclaimed author of After the Eclipse

Contact Information: MEDIA CONNECT
Steven Ramotar 212-593-6467 steven.ramotar@finnpartners.com
Brian Feinblum 212-583-2718 brian.feinblum@finnpartners.com

Steven Ramotar
Media Connect
+1 2125832718
email us here