Rod Nordland was one tough, determined and well respected war correspondent, who had been in some of the world’s most dangerous war zones, where there was not too much that could scare him and from which he emerged relatively unscathed. On July 5, 2019, one particular event would definitely be life-threatening. June 2019, he was in New Delhi, India because, “The Indian summer has always fascinated me, and I was in New Delhi, experiencing its climatic extremes firsthand.” It is a time when the population is waiting for the monsoon rains to cool things off because, “Heat builds to inhuman levels: days of 125 degrees Fahrenheit are not unheard-of; 110-degree days, or 43 Celsius, are common, with humidity sometimes approaching 100 percent. All are waiting for the monsoon to bring relief.” Rod Norland was out for a "morning jog in Delhi's beautiful Lodhi Gardens. [It was 120 degress Fahrenheit at 10 a.m.] That is really the last thing I remember with certainty. I only learned later that I had. . .made my way from the gardens to New Delhi's Golf Course Colony, several miles away."  He had collapsed "thrashing on the ground." And much later, what he was told, but could not bear witness to, was an incredible adventure that he never could have imagined in all of his many worldly expeditions. He had collapsed from an undiagnosed malignant brain tumor--the worst of the worst--glioblastoma, aka GBM-4. It was what killed Senators John McCain and Ted Kennedy and President Joe Biden's son Beau. What transpired from the time of his collapse until he was eventually medevaced to New York-Presbyterian Hospital's Weill Cornell Medical Center, and into the care of Dr. Philip Steig, is an adventure that only Rod Nordland could appreciate and write about, if only from the various witness accounts. Who better to listen to and question those witnesses than this intrepid correspondent.

Nordland takes us, and himself, down many paths in a tightly woven memoir, not only about his medical treatment, but about his life and that of his family.  That early life included a horrendously abusive father, whose behavior, outside the immediate family, landed him in prison. There was his most remarkable mother, who also was abused by her husband, and proved to be, among many others in Nordland's life, a protector, a firmament and an inspiration.  As in his war reporting, some is interspersed throughout, he is unsparing in his critical and penetrating analysis of events and people who have been part of his life. 

As to the meaning of life, he quotes Raymond Carver, “to feel yourself beloved on this earth.”