The Bright Hour Summary
Riggs, Nina

The Bright Hour Overview

This memoir of living with a diagnosis of terminal cancer focuses on the last year of the author’s life, a year in which she also experienced the cancer diagnosis of a good friend and the cancer-related death of her mother. As she both contrasts and integrates her own experiences with those of other writers (including Ralph Waldo Emerson, a distant relative), the author also explores themes related to the meaning and value of language, family connections, and interactions between the dying and the newly living.