Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad

(Random House, February 9, 2021)

I made the mistake of picking up Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted on a Sunday evening. Immediately, the story propelled me forward to the point where I could barely put the book down. Soon, sleep was of little interest, work, even less. I was ready to shut the door on quotidian obligations and just read about Suleika Jaouad.

When first encountered, Jaouad is living what most of us could only consider a charmed life. A senior at Princeton University, she is a glamorous, smart woman with an exotic pedigree--  a Swiss artist mother and a Tunisian French literature professor father.

We enter her story during the final weeks of her undergraduate life. She has visited the campus health center for inexplicable itching and fatigue, but comes away with no answers, so she focuses instead on her post-college life, the first weeks of which involve a slumlord apartment on Canal Street, partying too much, and leaping at an opportunity to work in Paris.

Her devoted new boyfriend joins her there. She’s working in the legal field, but her ambitions of being a writer come closer to fruition when she receives a coveted offer to become a war correspondent, and although Jaouad continues to feels unwell, her life’s trajectory otherwise seems to be flowing powerfully in the right direction.

That is, until it does not. In Paris, Jaouad learns that she faces a life-threatening illness. Her world collapses, and she immediately flies back home to the United States.

Even then, however, Jaouad is able to count her blessings. She is covered by her dad’s health insurance; she has friends in New York who house her family and secure appointments with specialists who will save her life. She receives care at two of the pre eminent cancer institutions in the country. She has a devoted family, boyfriend, and medical team to take care of her.

Her first doctor at Mount Sinai is a warm octogenarian who tells her that the complications of her particular leukemia are a “young man’s game” and that they will need the collaboration of others.

Jaouad’s journey is harrowing. The two kingdoms referenced in the book’s title are the kingdom of the sick and the kingdom of the well. Although Jaouad spends most of the book in the kingdom of the sick, this story is ultimately life affirming.

At the behest of a therapist whom her parents insist she see due to understandable depression, Jaouad embarks on a One Hundred Days Project which leads her to start a blog that eventually becomes a New York Times column called "Life, Interrupted." The young writer who dreams of being a war correspondent ultimately covers a war waged within her own body.

Eventually she recovers enough of her health to pursue other life goals, including an epic cross country road trip to meet some of the readers of her column. The gal who was initially terrified of driving a car is now clocking thousands of miles on the odometer.

Interestingly, the cover of Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted shows a woman, a VW camper van and a dog. For me, it brought to mind Frances McDormand’s character in Chloé Zhao’s film Nomadland. Both works were released within days of one another. Both make an indelible impression.

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