In a new memoir arriving in stores this month, television writer Jessica Queller (Gossip Girl, Gilmore Girls, Felicity, One Tree Hill) recounts her personal encounter with medical science. Four years ago, after watching her mother's struggle with breast cancer and painful death from ovarian cancer, Queller, now 38, tested positive for the BRCA-1 gene mutation, known as the "breast cancer gene." She faced these terror-producing statistics: an 87 percent chance of developing breast cancer, a 44 percent chance of developing ovarian cancer-and the possibility of slashing both risks by 90 percent by choosing radical surgeries to remove her breasts and ovaries. Young, single, and hoping to get married and have children, Queller confronted excruciating life and death choices, detailed in Pretty Is What Changes: Impossible Choices, the Breast Cancer Gene, and How I Defied My Destiny (Spiegel & Grau). She spoke about them to U.S. News.

I hoped to give other women courage. As a youngish, single woman, my fears were that having the surgeries would ruin my life, I would feel deformed, and never be attractive. My fears were enormous but turned out to be not well founded. Perhaps I'll inspire women who normally would be ostriches to get tested, to get better screening, and spare them the suffering I watched my mother go through. I don't like to proselytize about such a very personal decision. But every single woman I've met who's been through it agrees: We love our new breasts and feel great. I feel completely comfortable in my body. Plastic surgery is so advanced these days; they put you back together so beautifully. The brutal mastectomies of our mothers and grandmothers are simply not the case anymore. I want to make others aware that if they get this knowledge and this surgery, it's not that bad. Cancer is worse.