The Last Pilgrimage: My Mother's Life and Our Journey to Saying Goodbye - Hardcover

Daly, Linda

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 161902117X ISBN 13: 9781619021174

Publisher: Counterpoint, 2013

Synopsis

Linda Daly had a seemingly charmed life: her mother Nancy was married to the head of Warner Bros, and her parents were one of the most prominent couples in Los Angeles. Even their divorce couldn’t test the bond between mother and daughter, and their family grew: her mother married Dick Riordan, mayor of L.A.; her father married songwriter Carole Bayer Sager. But then they encountered the one thing they could not overcome: Nancy’s diagnosis of stage four pancreatic cancer.

So mother and daughter began a search for a miracle cure a roller-coaster ride through western medicine and alternative therapies. Out of choices and almost out of time, Linda and her mother put their faith in one last pilgrimage: a visit to a Brazilian faith healer during his residence in upstate New York.

When that failed, and with Nancy’s time quickly running out, Linda and her siblings embarked on a road trip, in a rented, unruly RV, to bring Nancy home. What Linda learned on their final pilgrimage together would change her forever and speaks to the issues faced by many adult sons and daughters today: how to help those who gave you life face the end of their own.

About this title

About the Author:

Linda Daly is a former teacher, working for a decade with some of L.A.’s most challenging children, before starting a family of her own. Her philanthropic work began with development and fundraising at local nonprofit organizations, including a six-month consulting job at the International Medical Corps. She served as the environmental expert at the Los Angeles Times Magazine, where she also maintained the blog Pretty in Green,” focusing on the lighter side of green issues. Linda has been a founding Board member of Vintage Hollywood, which raises funds to help children in Southern California; and Global Hunger Foundation, which seeks to alleviate hunger around the globe through small grants to women’s groups interested in sustainable farming. She has traveled to Eastern Chad to visit Darfuri refugee camps; to Rwanda to commemorate an anniversary of the genocide; and to the Kibera slum in Nairobi where she assisted women with AIDS. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children. They have four dogs, a duck, a horse, and too many tomato plants.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Even though Western medical intervention had given her much more time than had originally been thought, my goal oriented mom decided to look elsewhere. For her, there was another world of available options. All her previous dabbling in the world of alternative cures was just practice for what the next few months would hold. All the recommendations we had gotten before were dusted off and invited in to conquer the house of cancer. The time had arrived for her to fight from a different place now. She continued with a renewed fervor, her exploration in alternative ways to cure her cancer and calm her soul.

The time had come for a real miracle.

About this edition

• Publisher: Counterpoint
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 161902117X
• ISBN 13: 9781619021174
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288