She Writes Press is excited to announce The Cicadas: A Memoir, by Lene Fogelberg, for publication on our fall 2015 list.

If you feel you are dying, how do you make people believe you?

This pressure on my chest. The monster has found a place to rest, curl up, lean his heavy head. He is there; I can feel him, his weary pounding against my ribs.

Lene Fogelberg is dying, she is sure of it, though no doctor in her home country, Sweden, believes her. Love stories enfold her--with the man who will become her husband, with her enchanting surroundings, and later, with her two precious daughters. But the question she has carried in her heart since childhood, will I die young, is closing in, threatening all she holds dear, even her sanity. When her young family moves to the USA, an answer is found--a diagnosis--but it comes with a difficult price . . . one as ever-present as the cicadas. 

An unflinchingly honest, harrowing and inspiring account of growing up and living on the verge of death and the beauty, harshness, loneliness, and, ultimately, unbending love that can be found at this vantage point.

Lene Fogelberg is an award-winning poet and a double open-heart surgery survivor. Born in Sweden, she currently lives with her family in Indonesia. www.lenefogelberg.com