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Songs from a Lead-Lined Room: Notes--High and Low--from My Journey through Breast Cancer and Radiation
Songs from a Lead-Lined Room is a unique and remarkable book rooted in truth and raw experience, and the first memoir to focus on the personal experience of radiation treatment. As with Shea's best-selling fiction, her sharp and insightful wit and her reporter's eye for the most telling and sometimes quirky details inform every page. She shares what she learns about the process of her treatment, her bouts of despair, indignity, and fear, as well as the faux pas, the innocent blunders, and the compassion and caring of her family, friends, and fellow patients
- GenresMemoirNonfiction
216 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
1 person is currently reading
40 people want to read
About the author
Suzanne Strempek Shea
19 books71 followersSuzanne Strempek Shea is the author of five novels: Selling the Lite of Heaven, Hoopi Shoopi Donna, Lily of the Valley, Around Again, and Becoming Finola, published by Washington Square Press. She has also written three memoirs, Songs From a Lead-lined Room: Notes - High and Low - From My Journey Through Breast Cancer and Radiation; Shelf Life: Romance, Mystery, Drama and Other Page-Turning Adventures From a Year in a Bookstore; and Sundays in America: A Yearlong Road Trip in Search of Christian Faith, all published by Beacon Press.
She co-wrote 140 Years of Providential Care: The Sisters of Providence of Holyoke, Massachusetts with her husband, Tom Shea, and with author/historian Michele P. Barker. This is Paradise, a book about Mags Riordan, founder of the Billy Riordan Memorial Clinic in the African nation of Malawi, was published in April by PFP Publishing.
Her sixth novel, Make a Wish But Not for Money, about a palm reader in a dead mall, will be published by PFP Publishing on Oct. 5, 2014.
Suzanne’s essay Crafty Critters, about her lifelong love of knitting, a craft she learned in the “Crafty Critters” 4-H club of Palmer, Mass., back in childhood, is included in the recently released anthology Knitting Yarns, Writers on Knitting, edited by Ann Hood.
Winner of the 2000 New England Book Award, which recognizes a literary body of work's contribution to the region, Suzanne began writing fiction in her spare time while working as reporter for the Springfield (Massachusetts) Newspapers and The Providence (Rhode Island) Journal.
Her freelance journalism and fiction has appeared in magazines and newspapers including Yankee, The Bark, Golf World, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Organic Style and ESPN the Magazine. She was a regular contributor to Obit magazine.
Suzanne is a member of the faculty at the University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast MFA program in creative writing and is writer-in-residence and director of the creative writing program at Bay Path College in Longmeadow, Mass. She has taught in the MFA program at Emerson College and in the creative writing program at the University of South Florida. She also has taught in Ireland, at the Curlew Writers Conferences in Howth and Dingle, and in Dingle via the Stonecoast Ireland residency.
She lives in Bondsville, Mass., with Tommy Shea, most recently the senior foreign editor at The National newspaper in Abu Dhabi, and their dogs Tiny and Bisquick
She co-wrote 140 Years of Providential Care: The Sisters of Providence of Holyoke, Massachusetts with her husband, Tom Shea, and with author/historian Michele P. Barker. This is Paradise, a book about Mags Riordan, founder of the Billy Riordan Memorial Clinic in the African nation of Malawi, was published in April by PFP Publishing.
Her sixth novel, Make a Wish But Not for Money, about a palm reader in a dead mall, will be published by PFP Publishing on Oct. 5, 2014.
Suzanne’s essay Crafty Critters, about her lifelong love of knitting, a craft she learned in the “Crafty Critters” 4-H club of Palmer, Mass., back in childhood, is included in the recently released anthology Knitting Yarns, Writers on Knitting, edited by Ann Hood.
Winner of the 2000 New England Book Award, which recognizes a literary body of work's contribution to the region, Suzanne began writing fiction in her spare time while working as reporter for the Springfield (Massachusetts) Newspapers and The Providence (Rhode Island) Journal.
Her freelance journalism and fiction has appeared in magazines and newspapers including Yankee, The Bark, Golf World, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Organic Style and ESPN the Magazine. She was a regular contributor to Obit magazine.
Suzanne is a member of the faculty at the University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast MFA program in creative writing and is writer-in-residence and director of the creative writing program at Bay Path College in Longmeadow, Mass. She has taught in the MFA program at Emerson College and in the creative writing program at the University of South Florida. She also has taught in Ireland, at the Curlew Writers Conferences in Howth and Dingle, and in Dingle via the Stonecoast Ireland residency.
She lives in Bondsville, Mass., with Tommy Shea, most recently the senior foreign editor at The National newspaper in Abu Dhabi, and their dogs Tiny and Bisquick
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
April 17, 2017
A beautiful, honest accounting of the moments of fear, hope, friendship, and love that occur during a woman's breast cancer treatment. It is a more authentic cancer story than any other I have read, illustrating the pain, uncertainty, and frustration that go hand in hand with a terrifying diagnosis. It also tackles those well-intentioned platitudes that people come up with around the person with cancer, reminding us that it's OK to feel anger and annoyance, that everyone's path is not the same, that all feelings matter. Strempek Shea goes where others are afraid to go, showing us the icky inside view others shy away from.
May 15, 2007
A really compelling inside look at breast cancer.
September 18, 2016
An authentic portrait of journeying through life changing illness. Beautiful and honest.
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December 17, 2021Read in 2003; my review from then: Interesting read. Just what the title says. She found the experience depressing, and maybe the most important message of the book is that everyone reacts differently to this type of difficult situation, and it's okay not to be cheery and positive all the time.
February 13, 2017
I'm a fan of Suzanne Strempek Shea's--both the writer and the person--but I planned to never read this book because I don't like "disease" narratives and, more specifically, because I didn't want to think of the sunny, compassionate, hilarious person I know as sick. It took the illness of a family member who raved about the book to get me to read it, and now if you asked me which of her titles is her best--and there are many I love--I'd say without having to think twice, _Songs from a Lead-Lined Room_.
In it, she is brutally honest about the land that those who have received a cancer diagnosis inhabit: a land that is different both from their own countries that they inhabited a day before but also from the homeland of everyone else they know and love. She outlines both the details of her diagnosis, the hospital and staff and fellow travelers who inhabit the space she finds herself in, as well as the frequently ignored radiation therapy that many cancer patients experience.
This book is neither a hoot ("look how laughter got me through cancer!") nor is it the bummer you might expect. Instead, it is a snapshot into her life, and if you've been on the receiving end of a bad diagnosis, you will find yourself nodding your head often: you do feel alienated from people you love and from the self you knew before, and she illustrates that strange landscape well.
When I received my own crappy diagnosis five years ago, Suzanne was intuitively the first person I called even though I hadn't read this book. I can't remember what she said to me at the time, I can only remember that whatever it was changed the game for me and made me realize it was my story and I didn't have to follow the script for some movie-of-the-week. Now, it pleases me so much to realize that people who haven't had the benefit of knowing her can glean some of that same comfort, that same understanding, from reading this book. If you know someone who has cancer--particularly breast cancer--you might gently suggest they read this book.
In it, she is brutally honest about the land that those who have received a cancer diagnosis inhabit: a land that is different both from their own countries that they inhabited a day before but also from the homeland of everyone else they know and love. She outlines both the details of her diagnosis, the hospital and staff and fellow travelers who inhabit the space she finds herself in, as well as the frequently ignored radiation therapy that many cancer patients experience.
This book is neither a hoot ("look how laughter got me through cancer!") nor is it the bummer you might expect. Instead, it is a snapshot into her life, and if you've been on the receiving end of a bad diagnosis, you will find yourself nodding your head often: you do feel alienated from people you love and from the self you knew before, and she illustrates that strange landscape well.
When I received my own crappy diagnosis five years ago, Suzanne was intuitively the first person I called even though I hadn't read this book. I can't remember what she said to me at the time, I can only remember that whatever it was changed the game for me and made me realize it was my story and I didn't have to follow the script for some movie-of-the-week. Now, it pleases me so much to realize that people who haven't had the benefit of knowing her can glean some of that same comfort, that same understanding, from reading this book. If you know someone who has cancer--particularly breast cancer--you might gently suggest they read this book.
November 5, 2014
I really enjoyed the author's insight and perspective into a topic that gets little attention. People tend to touch on pretreatment and diagnosis, surgery and chemotherapy as treatments but do not go into the details of radiation therapy. Having just finished surgery, chemo, and radiation, I was amazed the things she had in common with my experiences, even having read the book during my last weeks of radiation, the time of year during Oct and Nov including Halloween and daylight time falling back in the fall, and even Election Day (all happening on each day I read about them), the experiences in radiation oncology including meeting other patients and dialog in the waiting area, relationships with techs, office people, doctors, and nurses, feelings about first and last days of treatment as well as personal relationships with family, friends, and coworkers. I especially appreciated the epilogue where she discussed her feelings after treatment was completed and she was suddenly without doctor appointments and finding herself figuring where she fit in the world post-treatment. I have a couple other books by this author that I look forward to reading.
April 17, 2009
This is the third book I've read by this author. She is also a fiction writer, although I haven't read any of those books. From what I can tell this book is her first foray into non-fiction, and I didn't enjoy it as much as the later two books that I read. It may be because this is her first attempt at non-fiction and she didn't quite have the feel for it yet, or perhaps because the book was crafted out of a diary she kept while undergoing radiation for breast cancer. I just had a hard time getting into the book at all, and even though it follows a certain timeline and revolves around a common theme it seemed a bit disjointed to me.
December 14, 2014
I've been wanting to read this memoir for years. Suzannne has been a speaker/workshop leader at several conferences that I've attended. In 2001 she was diagnosed with breast cancer. The book covers the period of seven weeks when she received radiation treatments. The book, however, like all good memoirs, is not just about that subject. This is a book I looked forward to getting back to each evening.
August 3, 2012
Love the true to life form writing and the reflective journey the author has with Molly Bish, upon and long after Molly's abduction. 'Lives' are stolen and these pages bring it to your level wherever that may be. `AdQk
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews