A poignant first-person account about two things many women fear the most: breast cancer and the tragic loss of a spouse. It's a story that raises the age-old question: How does a person hold on to faith when terrible things happen, one after another?

Carole Jones gives an answer-not a simple formula or pat response-but a wisdom refined in the crucible of pain. Her story, "The Long Goodbye," is a graceful memoir of her struggle with breast cancer, her husband's tragic bicycling accident, and the saga that followed as he slowly slipped away in a persistent coma.

How Carole and her family...