A #1 New York Times Bestseller • A deeply moving memoir of illness and recovery, exploring a young woman's journey from diagnosis to remission and her return to "normal" life. From the author of the New York Times column "Life, Interrupted." One of the best books of the year: The Washington Post, Bloomberg, Rumpus, SheReads, Library Journal, The New York Times Book Review, Booklist • "I have lived with Sleika's entire journey and will follow her everywhere she goes. . . . Her writing brings life to life and illuminates how we learn to endure what we know nothing about." Chanel Miller, The New York Times Book Review "Beautifully crafted. . . . moving. . . and transformative reading. . . . Sleika Jawad's insights into self, connection, doubt, and time speak to us all." – The Washington Post In the summer of her senior year of college, Seleika Jawad was preparing for, as they say at commencement, “real life.” She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. But the real life she found would take her to a different kind of conflict zone. A leukemia diagnosis and a 35 percent survival rate. Gone was the sparkle of the life she had envisioned. By the time Seleika returned home to New York, she had lost her job, her apartment, and her freedom. She would spend more than four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and writing a long saga in her New York Times column. When Seleika was finally able to leave the cancer ward—after multiple rounds of chemotherapy, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant—Seleika was, according to the doctors, cured. But she soon learned that treatment doesn’t end with being cured; it begins there. She had spent 1,500 days in a relentless pursuit of one goal—to stay alive. Now that she had, she knew she didn't know how to live. How would she ever come back to life and live again? How would she ever regain what she had lost? With her new faithful companion, Oscar, a mixed terrier, Sleika embarked on a 100-day road trip, covering 1,500 miles of the country. She began meeting strangers who had written to her during her years in the hospital: a young woman in Florida also recovering from cancer; a teacher in California devastated by the death of her son; a death row inmate in Texas who had spent years locked in a room. What she learned on this journey was that the barrier between health and illness was porous, and most people moved back and forth between these two realms. Between Two Realms is a vivid record of life again, and an inspiring, challenging, and moving exploration of what it means to begin again.