Mary Petersen
UNCHARTED TERRITORY

When Antoine – my stepson– returned to France after his stay at Petersen’s, he told me about Mary and handed me her journal. I was immediately touched by it. She had made some nice photocopies, chosen craft paper for the cover and bound it into a book with raffia. Her changing moods are evident in her irregular handwriting. I knew then that, in editing it, I wanted to retain the original look. I was moved by the contents – a profound, intelligent and heartrending account of Mary’s fight against breast cancer and her progress through this “uncharted territory”, intimate but never too revealing. Her true story in true language.

In conjunction with the author, we are made to realise how precious life is and how we take it for granted most of the time. The diagnosis of breast cancer forces this ordinary Californian woman to consider her lifestyle and change it in order to recover her health. For her this is not merely a theoretical exercise and as she says “transformation is a process not a product”.

Patricia Camby

Mary Petersen UNCHARTED TERRITORY

Mary Petersen
UNCHARTED TERRITORY