Beautiful, intimate, hopeful, and even funny, The Radiation Sonnets speaks to all of us who have battled illness with a loved one. Jane Yolen has spent her life giving enjoyment to millions of readers with her award-winning books and poems. But when her husband was diagnosed with an inoperable tumor, Yolen's writing became her emotional lifeline. Every evening, during the forty-three days that her husband, David, underwent radiation therapy, Yolen would retreat to her attic and pour out the day's events -- as well as her thoughts, fears, and love -- into sonnets, fourteen lines of rhymed verse. The result is a remarkable sequence of uncommonly intimate, unexpectedly humorous, and deeply healing poems that chronicle her family's journey through trauma and toward recovery.