Before My Time: A Memoir of Love and Fate

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

“McKay breathes new life into the ghosts of her deceased relatives, presenting them in vignettes as characters that readers come to care about. Conflicts abound throughout the memoir, captivating readers’ interest and heightening the tension. . . . McKay should be commended for her honesty and thoroughness in tackling this difficult subject. Her memoir is a thought-provoking eye-opener that is hard to put down.” —Winnipeg Free Press

“A lovingly chronicled family tale about fatal genetic predisposition. . . . In the best of creative non-fiction writing, this genetic memoir weaves together her family history and scenes from her past. . . . Beautifully written.” —Annapolis County Spectator

“Ami McKay, how do you do it? How do you turn a tale of cancer genetics gone mad into a surreal and beautiful story of love and resilience and genealogy and history? Daughter of Family G is more than a memoir—it manages to unfold and examine all of our pasts. How do we define ourselves? What is destiny? Is fate as simple as it sounds, or can it be rewritten? This book became a bible of sorts for me, providing me with the most brilliant tools to imagine my own future. Every single time I turned a page, I felt more invested in the lives of Ami and Ami’s family. Her ability to be vulnerable and open was beautiful. How she faced her personal demons and gave them heart was everything. I was sad when it was over. I wanted to follow Ami to her house and sit at her kitchen table and ask her a hundred questions. This book read so much like a novel. It was suspenseful and heartfelt and scary and wonderful. Who knew cancer could be so interesting.” —Jann Arden

“Ami McKay’s memoir is a deep and relevant meditation on navigating the terrain between the genes we inherit and the life we choose. For McKay, despite a life-threatening mutation, it is life-affirming family love that triumphs.” —Pauline Dakin, author of Run, Hide, Repeat

“Ami McKay’s book mourns all that is lost, but is no tragedy. Instead, she celebrates the ancestors who contributed so much to our understanding that cancer is in part hereditary. More importantly, she teaches us through moving stories and memories how to live and live on beyond the grasp of destiny.” —JJ Lee, author of The Measure of a Man

“This beautifully told, genre-bending story is part mystery and part love story that reads like historical fiction. I couldn’t put it down. It’s the rare book that makes you laugh, cry and learn so much.” —Tina Cassidy, author of Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait

“Infused with hard-won wisdom, this brilliant memoir of a family haunted by cancer is an invitation, in the face of fear, to be “wildly, passionately, outrageously devoted to life.” Bees, crinoline, hospital labs, kindness, grief, despair, and especially love—the large and small signatures are all here, recognizable, heartbreaking, and confirming. Moved to tears, I held this profound and courageous book to my heart, reminded of life’s frail wonder.” —Beth Powning, author of The Sea Captain's Wife | AMI McKAY is the author of three bestselling novels—The Birth House, The Virgin Cure, and The Witches of New York—as well as the novella, Half Spent Was the Night. Her memoir, Before My Time (originally titled Daughter of Family G), was named a CBC Best Book of 2019. McKay is also a playwright, composer, and essayist. Her non-fiction work has appeared in Elle Canada, The Independent, Canadian Living, and Chatelaine. Born and raised in the Midwest, she now lives in Nova Scotia. | PROLOGUE

In My Blood

One week after 9/11, I walk into a hospital in rural Indiana and ask a nurse to draw six vials of blood from my arm. I need to know what the future holds, at least my meagre part of it. I’m a healthy, thirty-three-year-old mother of two who can’t stop thinking about what tomorrow might bring.

A small TV perched on a filing cabinet in the nurse’s office is tuned to the morning news. A commentator with perfect hair and straight teeth stares at me from the screen. The crawl beneath her smiling face reads: IS THIS THE NEW NORMAL?

The nurse, prepping her kit, asks, “Will this make you squeamish?”

“No. I’ll just look away.”

I don’t. I watch every step of the procedure from start to finish—the elastic band pulling tight around my arm, the nurse’s fingers prodding for a vein, the slip of the needle into my skin, the steady flow of dark red blood into each tube as the nurse deftly swaps them, one after another—one, two, three, four, five, six. I’m looking to see if I can spot the ghosts in my blood.

Within the hour, the samples are shipped to a lab at a university in Nebraska. Researchers there will search for a genetic mutation in my DNA that predisposes me to developing several types of cancer. It’s a terrifying list. Colon. Endometrial. Ovarian. Stomach. Bile duct. Liver. Kidney. Pancreas. Upper urinary tract. Brain. Small intestine. Breast. Skin. The literature from the lab says: A far greater than average risk, at an earlier than average age. My uncle was diagnosed with his first cancer at twenty-six, my grandmother at fifty, her brother at forty-nine, her sister at forty-three, my mother at fifty-eight. Mom joked and said it was the first time in her life that she’d been a late bloomer. Cancer occurs so frequently in my family, it’s become a cruel rite of passage. The list of known initiates dates back to 1856.

The method the l