Stephen Donadio, Editor-at-large for New England Review wrote: “Joanne Jacobson’s work combines an unfailing lucidity with a richness of texture and an emotional depth rarely encountered in the current literary environment...Her writing has the immediacy of lived experience and a quality of steady detachment that compels us to recognize the dimensions of awareness necessary if we are to make the most of our lives. In sum, hers is an achievement of a very high order.”
When Joanne Jacobson’s writing about her mother’s respiratory illness was interrupted by her own diagnosis of a rare blood disorder, her perspective profoundly altered. Every Last Breath follows these two chronic illnesses as they become unexpectedly intertwined. As chronic illness blurs the distinction between illness and wellness, she discovers how a lifetime of relapse and remission can invite transformation.