Cancer threatens the lives of people around the world. Women, in particular, are at risk of certain cancers with a genetic cause. Certain mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes put mothers and daughters at risk of breast and ovarian cancers. Unlike many cancers that most commonly occur after age 60, these inheritable cancers threaten women’s lives, health and fertility even when they are young, before most would even begin to go for annual mammogram screenings to check for breast cancer. Three Daughters, Three Journeys takes on the biggest health issue of our time from a global perspective with three heroines fighting for their lives against cancer. Marzena, a Polish oncology nurse, has spent her life treating child patients with cancer. Then, she confronts it in her own family and her own body. Kamola, a rural Indian girl, knows she has symptoms of the same disease that took her mother, but feels afraid to discuss it with her father and brothers, knowing her family cannot afford medical treatment. Kamola confides in Dr Rini Mishra, a doctor testing a new treatment called Neelazin, using a bacterial anticancer protein in food, to destroy cancer cells. Selena, a wealthy woman of color in Chicago, finds out about her genetic risks of breast and ovarian cancer. She has a choice of preventative surgery that will save her life but remove any chance of having children. As she meets women who struggle to afford cancer treatment, Selena dedicates her life to providing affordable homes and counseling to families affected by the disease. Although the drug Neelazin is fictional, the possibility of new cancer treatments using bacterial anticancer proteins is being researched now. A problem with the current chemotherapy for cancer treatment is the high toxicity of most of these drugs, as these drugs can enter both normal and cancer cells, though preferably cancer cells, causing the death of normal cells as well that are important in maintaining health. Another problem is that current chemotherapeutic drugs mostly target a single or few key steps that are important for cancer growth and proliferation and inhibit the growth of cancer cells. The cancer cells respond by quickly changing these single targets, thereby becoming resistant to the drugs, as is reflected in stage IV cancer patients. An alternative to chemotherapy would be to exploit the bacterial evolutionary wisdom and use certain proteins that can have preferential entry to cancer cells in order to minimize normal cell toxicity and multiple targets in cancer cells through protein–protein complex formation, thus reducing resistance development in cancer cells. An interesting advantage of protein drugs is to express them as part of food, and some recent research seems to suggest that oral consumption of such foods may allow the therapeutic protein to reach the blood stream to target the cancer. Women with the genetic risk factors could soon have the choice of taking a pill or such anticancer protein-expressing food to treat or prevent cancer, rather than removing the healthy tissue of the breasts and ovaries. Hopefully, they would not have to choose between fertility and survival, as is the implied message in this book, fictional as it is at this time.

From the fertile hills of a tiny village near Jerusalem to the elegant townhouses of Georgetown, Three Daughters is a historical saga that chronicles the lives, loves, and secrets of three generations of Palestinian Christian women. Born in rural Palestine, just before the dawn of the twentieth century, Miriam adores her father and is certain his love will protect her, but she soon finds that tradition overrides love. Uprooted by war, Miriam enters a world where the old constraints slip away with thrilling and disastrous results. Miriam's rebellious daughter, Nadia, is thrilled with the opportunity for a modern life that her elite education provides. But when she falls in love with an outsider, the clan reins her back with a shocking finality. Nijmeh, Nadia's daughter, is an only child and the path her father, the sheik, sets for her is fraught with difficulties, yet it prepares her for her ultimate journey to America, where she finds her future. Each woman, in her own time and in her own way, experiences a world in transition through war and social change...and each must stretch the bounds of her loyalty, her courage, and her heart.

The story of three generations in twentieth-century China that blends the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history—a bestselling classic in thirty languages with more than ten million copies sold around the world, now with a new introduction from the author. An engrossing record of Mao’s impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love, Jung Chang describes the extraordinary lives and experiences of her family members: her grandmother, a warlord’s concubine; her mother’s struggles as a young idealistic Communist; and her parents’ experience as members of the Communist elite and their ordeal during the Cultural Revolution. Chang was a Red Guard briefly at the age of fourteen, then worked as a peasant, a “barefoot doctor,” a steelworker, and an electrician. As the story of each generation unfolds, Chang captures in gripping, moving—and ultimately uplifting—detail the cycles of violent drama visited on her own family and millions of others caught in the whirlwind of history.

Includes a partial Heming's family tree.

An Indie Next Pick The stunning, timely new novel from the acclaimed, internationally bestselling author of The Architect's Apprentice and The Bastard of Istanbul. Peri, a married, wealthy, beautiful Turkish woman, is on her way to a dinner party at a seaside mansion in Istanbul when a beggar snatches her handbag. As she wrestles to get it back, a photograph falls to the ground--an old polaroid of three young women and their university professor. A relic from a past--and a love--Peri had tried desperately to forget. Three Daughters of Eve is set over an evening in contemporary Istanbul, as Peri arrives at the party and navigates the tensions that simmer in this crossroads country between East and West, religious and secular, rich and poor. Over the course of the dinner, and amidst an opulence that is surely ill-begotten, terrorist attacks occur across the city. Competing in Peri's mind however are the memories invoked by her almost-lost polaroid, of the time years earlier when she was sent abroad for the first time, to attend Oxford University. As a young woman there, she had become friends with the charming, adventurous Shirin, a fully assimilated Iranian girl, and Mona, a devout Egyptian-American. Their arguments about Islam and feminism find focus in the charismatic but controversial Professor Azur, who teaches divinity, but in unorthodox ways. As the terrorist attacks come ever closer, Peri is moved to recall the scandal that tore them all apart. Elif Shafak is the number one bestselling novelist in her native Turkey, and her work is translated and celebrated around the world. In Three Daughters of Eve, she has given us a rich and moving story that humanizes and personalizes one of the most profound sea changes of the modern world.

Have you seen Oliver K. Woodman? You'd know if you had--he's made of wood. And he's on a spectacular cross-country journey. Folks of all sorts guide Oliver along the way and report back in letters and postcards to his friend Uncle Ray. After all, there's a lot of road--and adventure!--between South Carolina and California. Oliver's been spotted truckin' in Texas, riding in a Utah parade, and scaring off bears in the California redwoods. Where will he show up next? Read the letters. Follow the map. And buckle up for a road trip you'll never forget!