From ambulance to emergency room to recovery, Echoes of Heartsounds is one woman’s harrowing but triumphant journey into and out of the cardiac ward

It begins late one afternoon in her kitchen. There is no collapse, no massive pain. Just a slight fluttering sensation in her chest, then chills, and finally, nausea. Probably nothing to worry about, the doctor assures her on the phone. It doesn’t sound like a heart attack.

But it is. Heart attacks in women can look and feel dramatically different than they do in men, which is why they often go undiagnosed. But heart disease is the number-one killer of American women—greater than all forms of cancer combined.

When the doctor examines Lear the day after her episode, the verdict is shocking. So begins an account, filled with grace, humor, and ferocity, of her hard-won return to good health, beset by mysterious postsurgical complications and haunted by memories of her late husband when she finds herself in the same coronary unit in which she lost him all those years ago.