There's life, there's the printed word and there's television. If ever there was an example of how they can distort each other, it was the rollout of Elizabeth Edwards' new memoir, "Resilience."

The book is a deeply personal account of falling into three abysses -- her son's death at age 16 in a freak car accident, her ongoing fight against incurable cancer and her humiliation by the husband who had an extra-marital affair during his presidential primary campaign and lied about it. And of how she's managed to pull herself back toward the surface each time into a life that looked nothing like the one she'd had before.

By publishing this account, Mrs. Edwards is attempting to define her own life, to take control of a narrative that total strangers have bent and twisted to their own purposes without knowing anything about her beyond a one-dimensional public image.

Some passages betray a bit of denial on her part, but that's not uncommon among memoirists, and she's probably more entitled than most. If the book was her way of exacting a bit of revenge, she could have landed her punches in far more damaging ways.

But as a reader, mother and fellow cancer patient trying to push the prospect of my own premature demise into some dark recess where it won't haunt me every minute of every day, the book strikes me mostly as an effort to address her children's future without her, giving them her story in a shape that will have some meaning and answer some questions after she's gone.

We're all entitled to our own stories -- if we don't have a right to that, then what? -- but it turns out that Mrs. Edwards has provoked the baying hounds. She's a former political wife who decided not to exit the public consciousness still smiling like a robot through her husband's infidelity. And that has made a lot of people very mad.

Some of the backlash is based on her TV appearances promoting the book, which is unfortunate because the author who comes off as searching and genuine in print was much more guarded and stiff with Oprah and Larry King -- especially in requiring that interviewers not mention the name of John Edwards' other woman, Reille Hunter, which is widely known.

But some of the negative reactions, including the attacks by female media figures, have been stunning in their vitriol. These people seem personally offended that Mrs. Edwards didn't just fall off the map, as if it was bad taste for her not to go away and die quietly.

Here I should make something clear. Even after reading the book, I'm still upset that Elizabeth Edwards helped her husband mislead the country about his character and his chances for winning the presidency with a sex scandal in the closet. When he told her about the affair -- mischaracterizing it as a single slip when it was really an ongoing relationship -- she asked him to withdraw from the race. But he insisted on continuing and she went along, making public appearances on his behalf. If he'd won the nomination, his outing would have set the Democrats back 20 years. It's clear she didn't see it that way at the time, and may not even now, but it's still tough to forgive.

My issue is with what the couple did during the campaign, though, not with Mrs. Edwards' desire to explain herself. And despite my feelings about the campaign, or maybe because of them, I found the book quite enlightening.

"Resilience" reveals a lot about how and why Mrs. Edwards could have stood by her man at all those campaign rallies. And it gives voice to the fears that all cancer patients must face, even as we do everything possible to avoid them.

The book is by turns insightful, wrenching and frustrating. There are passages where one wants to weep for the author's broken heart -- she visited her dead son's grave every day, looked for him on the street, in passing black Jeep Cherokees, even in household drawers, as mad as she knew that was. And there are places where one can see her trying to protect herself (someone has to do it) and the husband who, in the view of many, does not deserve to be protected.

What emerges, and what helps answer the question of why she has stayed with him, is the difference between things that cannot be controlled and things that can be.

Elizabeth Edwards could not stop her son from dying or bring him back. She could not stop cancer from recurring even after all the chemo and radiation. She could not stop her husband from cheating on her. But she could stop that betrayal from destroying a 30-year marriage that had already endured so much. And she could stop it from shattering her family at a time when she needed them more than ever -- and when her children needed an intact home to face what was coming.

If that means blaming the other woman more than she blames him, not demanding a paternity test to see if he is, in fact, the father of Reille Hunter's baby, not looking to closely at details that could unhinge what's left of her security, well, whatever it takes to get you through the day, babe. Whatever it takes. Nobody else has to like it, but nobody else has to live it, either.