Recommended by Andrew Weil in Natural Health, Natural Medicine, Lupus Novice gives a moving account of the author's successful struggle with incurable SLE (systemic lupus erythematosus), affecting mostly women. Ms. Chester shares the personal discoveries behind her recovery, and a meditation on what it means for a body to be attacking itself. This enlarged edition updates her story and includes a foreword by the best-selling authority on immune-system disease: the author of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Dr. Jesse Stoff.Laura Chester has written a moving and significant book. On one level, she discusses her personal odyssey through the realm of a serious and inexplicable disease-its history, current cultural status, biology, symbolism, and the doctors of all persuasions who attempt to cure it. On another level, she speaks to the esoteric level of the disease, discussing the initiation into a deeper level of self and a journey through the unconscious and archetypal aspects of nature. On this level, she is an artist more than a patient, an individual who has the power to effect her cure.- Richard Grossinger, author of Planet Medicine

Laura Chester has published many volumes of poetry, prose and non-fiction. Most recently, Holy Personal, looking for small private places of worship, was made available from Indiana University Press, and a selection of prose-poems, Sparks, was published by The Figures. Both books include extensive photographs by Donna DeMari. Station Hill Press released an updated version of Lupus Novice, an account of Chester's personal struggle and breakthrough with the auto-immune disease SLE, while Black Sparrow Press, published three of Chester's early books of fiction. Other novels include The Story of the Lake, Faber & Faber; and Kingdom Come, Creative Arts Book Company. Chester has edited four important literary anthologies, including Deep Down and The Unmade Bed. She is currently completing a fifth, Eros & Equus, a passion for the horse. Having grown up in Wisconsin, lived in Albuquerque, Paris, and Berkeley, she now travels between Patagonia, Arizona and the Berkshires of Massachusetts.Fo