FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 20, 2007

SLASH-POISON-BURN BECOMES REALITY IN HAWAII NOVELIST'S LIFE

It’s called “slash- poison-and-burn.”

That’s the treatment Hawaii author Cheryl Swanson endured at the age of fifty, in the hopes of eradicating her cancer. First comes surgery, then chemotherapy, finally, radiation—a slash/poison/burn assault on the body that modern medical sciences uses to target lurking cancer cells, but which also destroys healthy tissues as well. Swanson was in the midst of such a regimen when she had a flash of insight that was like a bolt from the blue.

She was going to chuck her career, leaving behind the lucrative world of medical technology. Complete the novel she always wanted to write. And forge ahead with her and her husband’s attempt to adopt a child from a third-world country. She was determined that nothing was going to stop her, including a diagnosis of invasive breast cancer whose prognosis her terse surgeon summed up in three short words: “Make a will.”

Swanson quickly learned not to broadcast her goals, because everyone thought she had lost her mind. Her Stanford Medical Center surgeon, Dr. Stephanie Jeffrey, had one word for continuing the adoption plan when it was confided to her: “Fuggedaboutit.” When it came to becoming a novelist, Swanson already knew better than to talk about it. “You simply don’t tell people you want to do that,” she said. “It’s like telling someone you want to be President. Everyone laughs and shakes their head and knows, for certain, there is something wrong with you.”

Three-and-a-half years later, her final triumph comes at the beginning of this year, with the publication of her debut novel, Death Game, by Zumaya Publications, LLC. Penned in the midst of chemotherapy, Death Game is a suspense/thriller that will soon be available at local bookstores on the islands. Swanson is planning the book launch at her new home in Kauai, where she lives with her husband, Bob, and their daughter, Carmen, who was adopted, post-cancer, from Guatemala.

Swanson said she was inspired by her breast cancer sisters. “The diagnosis creates a bond between individuals who, in other circumstance, might not have even spoken—thinking they had nothing in common,” she said. “My fellow patients were every ethnic background, from every walk of life, but, collectively, they had enough juice to raise the dead. I went through chemotherapy with a woman who ran a marathon after her second infusion. A woman I met from Iran had been in the parliament there, pre-Khomeni. She was planning a trip back to Iran to support the women there, even though she’d had to flee the country for her life. You’d expect everyone to be downcast, but we were fighting mad about what the disease was trying to take from us.”

Swanson described some of the difficulties faced by the women she met during treatment. “One women was a single black mom, who survived on food stamps and had to fend off a mentally unstable brother, who had once broke a bottle over her head, dragged her out of bed and beat her up. She’d been physically abused, verbally abused, told constantly how ugly and stupid she was. When you meet someone like that, and they’re facing breast cancer, you can’t help but wonder how they keep going. She was born in Nigeria and her name was Anaya, and she told me it meant: Look up to God. That was how she got through. She looked up to God.”

Cancer patients often find that treatment forces them to face some deep emotional wound or look beyond the ordinary for what is missing, Swanson said. When she shares her experiences about cancer, she never fails to have individuals tell her how cancer helped them resolve something they had pushed aside in their life. “Healing from a critical disease does seem to require making some kind of major change,” Swanson said. “It doesn’t have to be something huge, it can be simply finding time to be grateful for each day we have on this earth.” When you go through breast cancer, you come out knowing you don’t want to waste one more minute of your life.”

The cancer diagnosis galvanized the Swansons to sell their home in the Bay area and move to Kauai, a place they had both often visited. “A lot of people fall in love with the beauty of Hawaii, but to me the strongest attraction is the spirit of aloha in the people. What the ancient Hawaiians recognized is that everyone has a life force, a soul. In the Hawaiian language, alo means presence and ha means breath or life force. So when we extend “aloha” to someone, we are recognizing that he is a human being, he has a soul.”

“We’ve lost that connection to each other on the mainland,” Swanson said. “There’s a baseline level of self-protection that is necessary—particularly in the big cities. On the streets of San Francisco, if you linger to talk to a stranger, let someone unfamiliar interact with your child in a park, even if you just make strong eye contact, you’re taking a chance. Traveling for business over the years as a single woman, I was mugged in Atlanta, my hotel room was robbed in New Orleans, a knife was drawn on me on the street in New York City…it got very old. In Hawaii, particularly in the small rural communities, like the one I joined in Kauai, there is a basis for trust. You don’t need to be afraid of each other. You don’t need to dominate each other. You can see the holy in each other.”

Swanson drew on her experience with teenagers for Death Game.” The novel raises provocative questions about the effect of exposing children to ultra-violent videogames,” Swanson said. “I don’t pretend to have any answers, but the book alerts readers that there is a level of graphic violence they might not have expected. You do have to ask yourself if it is a world you want your children inhabiting for hours every day. ”

Swanson is officially in remission, having been cancer-free for almost four years. “Looking back, I think what my fellow cancer patients and I rebelled against was that sense that our stories were over, that we were not supposed to want anything more. The truth was, the stories were just beginning.”

On March 14, 2006, Swanson realized that living in a virtual paradise is no protection against loss. “Early that morning the Ka Loko Dam burst, sending a monstrous wave of water—as high as 20 feet—down two miles of terrain to the ocean. In its pathway were seven people, five of whom I knew, two whom where were good friends,” she said. “My daughter attended a private preschool on the land overwhelmed by the flood. My husband was turned back from dropping her off by the police. Then we found out that Carmen’s teacher, Aurora Fehring, had been swept away, along with her husband and young son. Cristina McNees, another victim of the flood, was also adored by my daughter. Cristina’s fiance was also lost, a week before their marriage.”

“Those women were a light to everyone around them,” Swanson added. “They understood the true meaning of aloha—seeing the holy in everyone, especially in children. They made a purposeful effort to look for the light within others. Cancer taught me to do that, but it’s something Aurora and Cristina already knew.”

Swanson is currently working on the next mystery in the series, which begins in San Francisco and concludes in the northern Hawaiian islands. An avid sailor, Swanson has been familiarizing herself both with Hawaii’s landscape, waterways and diverse populations. “I spent twenty years as a motivational speaker, which gave me opportunity to travel the world,” she said. “But I didn’t find anyplace more fascinating than Hawaii. The mixing of diverse cultures, the incredibly natural beauty, the highly localized legends and ghost stories, the islands have it all.”

She is available for bookstore signings and interviews and can be reached at cherylaswanson@gmail.com.