Invisible Sisters
PublicAffairs, April 2009. First Edition. Hardcover. When Jessica Handler was eight years old, her younger sister Susie was diagnosed with leukemia. To any family, the diagnosis would have been upending, but to the Handlers, whose youngest daughter Sarah had been born with a rare congenital blood disorder, it was an..... More
Staff Pick
This should be an unbearably sad memoir, a tale of a family devastated by the terminal illnesses of two of its three daughters. And it is full of unimaginable grief, rendered in clear-eyed, unsentimental prose. However, Invisible Sisters is also smart, funny, adventurous, instructive, and life-affirming. All of these adjectives apply to its author, too; Jessica Handler is a teacher, mentor, cheerleader, and friend to the whole Atlanta literary community, and an especially dear one to us at A Cappella. In 2019, she will add “novelist” to her list of descriptors, as her fictional debut, The Magnetic Girl, launches in April, promising to be one of the biggest books of our anniversary year.