Sarah Ramey’s first book was supposed to be a very big deal. Her publishers expected The Lady’s Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness to be a runaway best seller.”We had a huge publicity slate,” she says, a bit shyly. “You know, the Today show and CBS This Morning and, actually, NPR’s Weekend Edition.”
The Lady’s Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness by Sarah RameyAnchor
But instead of going on NPR to discuss her memoir, which explores the history of women like herself debilitated by autoimmune diseases like chronic fatigue syndrome, Ramey is talking about the cosmically terrible timing of its release date: March 17, 2020. “That’s also essentially the same week that COVID-19 came out,” she observes. “For it to come out that week, of all weeks, was really … challenging.”