Blue Windows: A Christian Science Childhood / Barbara Wilson

"Frequently caricatured as the religion that rejects medical treatment, Christian Science gets a balanced, nuanced appraisal in this memoir by a writer who grew up within the faith. Barbara Wilson appreciates Christian Science's unusual openness to women, who gained self-respect and status as its practitioners and healers, but she bares its inadequacies in a wrenching account of her mother's battle with cancer, suicide attempt, and eventual death. Her precise, unsentimental prose delineates a decades-long journey toward self-knowledge and peace with her past: it's a very American saga, sensitively told." Amazon.com

Autobiography of a Face / Lucy Grealy

"At age nine, Lucy Grealy was diagnosed with a potentially terminal cancer. When she returned to school with a third of her jaw removed, she faced the cruel taunts of classmates. In this strikingly candid memoir, Grealy tells her story of great suffering and remarkable strength without sentimentality and with considerable wit. Vividly portraying the pain of peer rejection and the guilty pleasure of wanting to be special, Grealy captures with unique insight what it is like as a child and young adult to be torn between two warring impulses: to feel that more than anything else we want to be loved for who we are, while wishing desperately and secretly to be perfect." Amazon.com