PRETTY IS WHAT CHANGES
Impossible Choices, the Breast Cancer Gene and How I Defied My Destiny
By Jessica Queller

“Queller has written a vivid, powerful, informative account of a difficult situation and an almost impossible decision . . . with honesty and grace.”
—Library Journal (starred)

“Beautifully textured . . . impossible to put down.”
—Booklist

“By turns inspiring, sorrowful and profoundly moving. Queller’s sense of humor and grace transform the most harrowing of situations into a riveting and heartfelt memoir.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Seamless and gripping. Readers will be rooting for Queller and her heroic decision to confront her genetic destiny.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Jessica Queller gives us a warm, chilling, unflinching look at her personal journey of survival with style. The ending will surprise you. Her prescience is astounding. Her courage is inspirational. Brava Jessica!”
—Marisa Acocella Marchetto,
author of Cancer Vixen

After losing her mother to ovarian cancer, Jessica Queller decided to take the test to see if she carried the BRCA “breast cancer gene” mutation. A beautiful, 35-year-old single woman with a successful career as a writer for television and many friends, Queller expected to be able to rule out a genetic predisposition toward her mother’s fate—after all, no other women in her family had had breast or ovarian cancer—but to her surprise, she tested positive for the BRCA1 mutation, and life as she knew it would never be the same. With an 87% chance of developing breast cancer and a 44% chance of developing ovarian cancer, and an elevated risk for early-onset cancer, Jessica faced an agonizing choice: she could spend her life vigilantly watching and waiting for cancer and then resolving to fight it when it came; or, she could undergo a prophylactic double mastectomy that would effectively reduce her odds of developing breast cancer to 3%. PRETTY IS WHAT CHANGES: Impossible Choices, the Breast Cancer Gene, and How I Defied My Destiny (Spiegel & Grau, $24.95, On-Sale: 4/1/08) is the author’s harrowing and inspiring story—first of watching her own mother die an early, horrific death, and then of her own life-altering decision to avoid the same fate by having a prophylactic double mastectomy.

While stories about the BCRA gene and women like Jessica have begun to surface in the national media, PRETTY IS WHAT CHANGES is the first book to be published on this subject. It delves into issues of sexuality, intimacy, body image, and a woman’s very identity, and explores how Queller, who yearns for marriage and a family of her own, must still confront what it means to be at risk of ovarian cancer. Both a riveting exploration of the surreal places modern biotechnology can lead us and a moving memoir about love, death, beauty, and choices, PRETTY IS WHAT CHANGES is an odyssey from the frontiers of science to the private interiors of a woman’s life.

Superbly informed, courageous, and armed with surprising wit and style, Queller answers a question we may one day face for ourselves: If genes can map our fate and their dark knowledge is offered to us, will we willingly trade innocence for the information that could save our lives? It is a question that is certain to engender heated debate for decades to come, and for women in their 20s, 30s, and 40s in particular, the question could be a matter of life or death—right now. PRETTY IS WHAT CHANGES is a provocative, timely, and important new book that should not be missed.