Three Years Left
In October 2022, Shalisa James’s doctor told her she had roughly three years to live. Most people would retreat. Shalisa bought a plane ticket.
Three Years Left is a raw, funny, heartbreaking, and ultimately triumphant memoir of a Grammy-nominated vocalist, show producer, and mother who chose to keep living, through Stage 4 cancer, chemotherapy, a collapsed lung, septic shock, a near-death experience in Egypt, and more occurrences than most people pack into a lifetime. This is not a book about dying. It is a book about showing up.
Meet Shalisa James, Author, Vocalist & Fighter
Shalisa James is an award-winning vocalist, Grammy and Emmy nominee, Drama Desk Award winner, and show producer based in Orlando, Florida. She has performed with Michael Jackson, spent an evening around Liza Minnelli’s piano, and produced shows with Walt Disney World, Universal Studios, Dolly Parton, J.K. Rowling, and Jimmy Fallon. The King of Jordan once bought her a swimsuit. She has sung on Broadway stages, climbed the Great Wall of China, and done yoga in Bali.
In 2022, she was diagnosed with Stage 4 terminal cancer and kept going anyway. Three Years Left is the memoir she wrote from the middle of the battle, because she believed her story was worth telling before time ran out. Cancer, she says, is the least interesting thing about her.
Watch the Story Come to Life
Watch the official book trailer for Three Years Left and hear Shalisa tell her story in her own words. Warning: it will make you want to call someone you love.
A Book That Refuses to Look Away
Three Years Left is a front-row seat to what happens when a woman refuses to let cancer define her. In nineteen chapters spanning three years, six hospitals, eight operations, nine treatment protocols, and eighteen countries, Shalisa James documents her fight against Stage 4 endometrial cancer with the honesty of a journalist and the humor of someone who has absolutely nothing left to lose.
She writes about singing for Michael Jackson and nearly dying in an Uber in Egypt. About chemo and champagne, about losing her hair and finding her faith, about the kind of friendships that show up at 2 am and the kind that quietly disappear. She writes about laughing when things are terrible, because that is what her family, the James Gang, does.
Available in eBook ($6.99), Paperback ($15.83), and Hardcover ($23.99).
TESTIMONIALS
“I have watched Shalisa carry herself through the last three years with a grace and humor that is genuinely beyond explanation. Three Years Left is exactly what she is: honest, warm, hilarious, heartbreaking, and utterly alive. She writes the way she sings: with everything she has. This book will shake you awake and make you want to live your life differently. I could not put it down.”
Robert Kelin
Pastor & Community Leader, Orlando
“When you are walking through your own health crisis, the last thing you want is someone telling you to stay positive. Shalisa doesn’t do that. She shows you. She shows you what it looks like to keep getting on planes and singing on stages and fighting insurance companies and laughing at yourself while your world is falling apart. I read this book in two sittings and gave it to three people the next day.”
John william
Cancer Patient & Reader, Florida
Latest News and Blogs
From Shalisa’s Desk
Three years of chemo, radiation, and red-eye flights, and Shalisa is still writing. Catch her latest reflections on faith, music, travel, and what it means to keep showing up.
From Shalisa’s Desk
Updates from the road, the treatment chair, and the stage because life doesn’t stop for cancer, and neither does Shalisa.