Book Review: Chemo Pilgrim: An 18-Week Journey of Healing and Holiness

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 by Brother Christopher

            Cancer is a word that immediately scares us. While all of us understand intellectually that many people have to deal with various types of cancer and their treatment, few of us sit around thinking of the time when our number will be called. Instead, we go on with our lives, try our best to live as healthfully as possible, and don’t stress over whatever frightening possibilities may occur down the road. Some may deem this a subtle form of denial, but it is how most of us cope with life while still being able to celebrate the joyful, beautiful, and humorous moments of each day. And it is entirely understandable.

            However, all of this changes when the “C” word is spoken to us personally, in the form of a diagnosis perhaps, or the news of a close friend or family member having to suddenly face such an illness. Cancer is then brought to an intensely personal level, and one’s life can easily be swallowed by fear and uncertainty. Where does one turn for the support that is so essential if the experience is to be something more than simply a terrifying chapter of “will I live or will I die?”

            Cricket Cooper is an Episcopal priest and a Companion of New Skete who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma in 2012. She has written an intensely personal account of the process she went through in her medical treatment, while at the same time using her illness as the basis for a spiritual pilgrimage that re-frames the process into a spiritual journey filled with danger, hope, renewal, and surprise. Chemo Pilgrim: An 18-Week Journey of Healing and Holiness, is an utterly unique look into how Cricket deals with her illness while using it as a means for spiritual growth and enlightenment.

            Cricket is a very accessible and amiable writer, and the reader of this book will soon be enchanted with her unique and uncanny way of looking at reality. She moves gracefully through moments of utter vulnerability and fear, to laugh-out-loud moments that shine the light on the weirdness of the human condition. Throughout the whole of the book she doesn’t take herself too seriously, even in the face of circumstances we all know to be utterly serious. 

            One of the distinctive aspects of this book is how she alternates chapters between honest descriptions of her cycle of treatments and accounts of pilgrimages she makes to various monasteries, both Christian and non-Christian, in between. Full disclosure: one of the places she spent on retreat was New Skete, and Cricket has since become a close friend of the community. But her descriptions of the monastic pilgrimages are interesting and revealing, and provide effective means of balancing the more medical chapters that describe her chemotherapy. Throughout all of it she writes with a sure hand that is unsentimental and insightful.


            This is a book that is more than just a “cancer book.” While giving the reader an intimate picture of one person’s dealing with illness, it also shows how the process can become the means to deeper spiritual wisdom and personal transformation. It will be relevant to those dealing with cancer, to those who may know someone with cancer, and to those who seek to understand how to deal constructively with adversity of any kind. It is an inspiring book that I recommend to anyone looking for a deeper perspective on the mysterious character of life.  


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