Woman on the Run

6,000 miles that saved my life

Non-Fiction - Memoir
300 Pages
Reviewed on 08/31/2026
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    Book Review

Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite

Woman on the Run by Susan Carpenito Heard, with Jeanne Albanese, is a memoir about a mother learning how to keep living after her son David is diagnosed with neuroblastoma at eight. Heard enters his treatment determined to preserve the joyful world he loves, then must find a way forward after his death leaves the family changed forever. Years later, running gives Susan a place to put the grief that has followed her into daily life, eventually taking her from tentative miles to a marathon. When a car collision damages her ankle, she has to rebuild physically just as movement has become central to how she copes. As her marriage ends, Susan receives a breast cancer diagnosis that places her inside the medical system as the patient, bringing her back to the fears she once faced with David.

Susan Carpenito Heard’s Woman on the Run is an exceptional memoir, and Heard writes about David with such affection that he very quickly feels familiar, and I soon understood why he was the heartbeat of so much of her world. I loved how well she captures his humor, like before surgery at Sloan Kettering when he steps from a limousine and tells his surgeon that he looks older than expected. Heard’s candor about herself creates that same familiarity, bringing readers close to the woman behind every mile. Her writing about friendship has so much heart because she understands what it means simply to stay beside someone. In Arizona, Susan does exactly that for another runner through a half-marathon, listening as Jen once listened to her. Well written and deeply moving, readers who enjoy memoirs about rebuilding a life will adore this.