"Mary Cappello's Called Back shimmers on the page. Ezra Pound said a writer has to 'make it new, ' and Cappello has done that rare feat. Cancer books have become a genre that nobody wants to read, except this book. Read this book. Called Back is exquisite."--Patty Dann

"There is no scarier moment than when the doctor looks at his feet, clears his throat, and mutters that you have cancer. The Earth opens under you. After a while, most patients summon a remarkable courage to confront the relentless disease and the rugged cures. But few have summoned the clear-eyed, large-hearted intelligence that Mary Cappello has to describe the experience in harrowing, redemptive detail. With precision, passion, wit, and a poet's eye for the incongruous and devastating--that is to say, the human--she has written a book that will open your eyes and touch your heart. Called Back is an astonishing literary achievement."--J. D. McClatchy

In this sensuous and intelligent memoir, Mary Cappello wonders aloud for us what breast cancer awareness really makes us aware of and responds as if for the first time to the deceivingly simple command: "Tell me what you're feeling." Called Back looks through the lens of cancer to discover new truths about intimacy and essential solitude, eroticism, the fact of the body, and the impossibility of turning away.

Mary Cappello's seven books of literary nonfiction include a Los Angeles Times bestselling detour on awkwardness, a lyric biography, and the mood fantasia Life Breaks In. Her most recent book, Lecture, a speculative manifesto, inaugurates Transit Books' Undelivered Lecture Series. A former Guggenheim and Berlin Prize Fellow, she is a Professor of English and creative writing at the University of Rhode Island.