This September, Crown Archetype is proud to publish Promise Me, the powerful and inspiring memoir by Nancy G. Brinker, founder and CEO of Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
Growing up, Nancy and her sister Suzy were inseparable, with the elegant, socially poised Suzy serving as younger sister Nancy’s best friend and role model. Then in 1977, at the age of thirty-three, Suzy was stricken with breast cancer. Three years later, having endured an uninformed doctor, surgeries that left her feeling mutilated and stripped of her sexuality, and fighting through several grueling courses of chemotherapy and radiation, Susan G. Komen lay dying. Toward the end, she begged her sister to do something, anything, to make sure that other women with breast cancer would not have to suffer as she had from the ravages of this deadly disease.
"Promise me, Nanny," she said. "Promise me you won’t let it go on like this."
Her heart broken, Nancy promised: "I swear, Suzy. Even if it takes the rest of my life."
At that moment, Susan G. Komen for the Cure was born.
Promise Me is the story of how that vow launched Nancy on a thirty-year-long mission to change the way the world thought of, spoke of, and treated breast cancer. Brinker’s unparalleled success at turning $200 and a list of would-be donors into a movement that has saved the lives of millions of women was recognized by President Obama in August 2009, when he awarded Brinker the Presidential Medal of Freedom. "In the months after making that promise," the President noted, "Nancy lay awake at night wondering if one person can really make a difference. Nancy’s life is the answer."
By sharing Promise Me with your own sister or your loved one, together you can join the global movement to end breast cancer forever
Preorder your copy of Promise Me.
Read an excerpt from Promise Me.
