Book excerpt: Christina Middlebrook was not quite fifty when she was told that a lump in her breast was not only malignant, but had already metastasized, and she had a fifty-percent chance of surviving more than two years. In her beautiful, unflinching memoir, Middlebrook conveys the physical and emotional ordeal of coming to terms with her own imminent death. Candid and courageous, Middlebrook's memoir honestly relates her story, which, unlike many books about illness that end in triumph, can offer no reassuring conclusion. In the tradition of William Styron's "Darkness Visible, "Seeing the Crab is a true and incredibly powerful story of facing the unthinkable with grace.