MY GLORY WAS I HAVE SUCH FRIENDS

In this heartrending and magical memoir, Amy Silverstein tells the story of the extraordinary group of women who helped sustain her in her time of greatest need. 25 years after her heart transplant she needs another one. She moves to California and her friends move with her. Week after week, one of them stays with her. The best talks and deepest laughter evolve as Amy is waiting for a new heart.

“We were grown daughters all, some mothers of high school or college kids, a few of us seasoned career women. We had become our middle-aged selves. Our wisest, steadiest, most powerful selves yet. And we discovered a new best in ourselves together because I was dying, really dying this time, and we weren’t twenty-five anymore.”

So begins a story about survival and the power of female friendship. Twenty-five years after a successful heart transplant, Amy Silverstein needs another one - fast. When her doctors say that her best shot at survival depends on moving across the country to wait for a matching donor heart that might or might not become available in time, Amy’s friends drop everything and follow her to a hospital room in California with sleeves rolled up to work a miracle.

Empowered by the kind of empathy that can only grow with age, these women pass the baton from one to the next, week after week, vying to sustain Amy with the might of all they had become in the twenty-five years that strengthened their friendships and grew them from girls to women. The best talks ever, the deepest laughter, the exchange of wisdom as never before. A book about the power of community and friendship and the way women can show up for one another to achieve the impossible.

Amy Silversteinis the author of SICK GIRL (Grove Atlantic 2007), which won a “Books for a Better Life Award” in 2008 and was a finalist for the Border’s Original Voices Award.Amy served six years on the Board of the United Network of Organ Sharing (UNOS) and is an active speaker on women’s health issues and patient advocacy.