The Healing Art by A.N. Wilson

Pamela Cowper, nearing forty, is facing death. Not as a remoste abstract proposition, but as an immediate reality. Her doctor had diagnosed cancer, and Pamela is told she has perhaps a matter of months to live. How does a lively, intelligent woman confront this appalling prospect? Pamela, a university lecturer in English, makes her won decisions - something to the alarm of her medical advisers. One journey is undertaken at the suggestions of her parish priest, the formidable Hereward Stickley. Another, to America, is Pamela's own idea. Both journeys, in a sense, misfire: both lead to discoveries, of a kind, but the revelations encountered prove to be deeply ambiguous.