Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of former Democratic vice presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. John Edwards, says in a new book that she survived a harrowing battle with advanced breast cancer last year that left her too depleted for public appearances.

Largely out of the public eye since her husband's loss to the Bush-Cheney ticket in 2004, Edwards describes in a forthcoming autobiography how she endured months of grueling treatment in early 2005. The treatment included chemotherapy, surgery and radiation with side effects, including nausea, loss of hair and nerve damage in her hand that made it difficult to write.

"The cancer seems to be gone," she writes in the book, "Saving Graces: Finding Solace and Strength From Friends and Strangers," scheduled for publication Sept. 26 by Broadway Books. The book will have an initial printing of more than 100,000 copies.

The News & Observer obtained an advance copy of uncorrected galley proofs.

Edwards, 57, has not talked publicly about her battle until this book, preferring to focus on fighting her illness and raising her two young children. She has rarely traveled with her husband during the past year as he has crisscrossed the country preparing for a likely 2008 run for the presidency.

She lives in Chapel Hill, where she and her husband are building a home.

The autobiography traces Edwards' life as the daughter of a decorated naval aviator, her law career, her family, the loss of their 16-year-old son in an automobile accident and her husband's political career. The book includes few political revelations but does cast new light on her illness.

She describes her book as "a shout from up on the tightrope."

Edwards writes that she first discovered a large lump while campaigning in Wisconsin 12 days before Election Day in 2004. But it was not until a visit home to Raleigh, a week later, that she had a chance to visit her doctor and get tests. She then told her husband that she probably had breast cancer.

She recalls talking with her husband about whether they should stop campaigning -- a move that was rejected when a doctor said a couple of days' delay in treatment would not matter.

Although the cancer was kept private until after the campaign, Edwards told Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate.

"John Kerry can be a great cheerleader, arm around your shoulder, flattering you and urging you on, and that is what he was that day, a sincere and compassionate cheerleader," she writes. "We won't ever forget it."

After Kerry's concession speech in Boston, the Edwardses were driven directly to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where a biopsy provided a definite diagnosis. A week later, Edwards began chemotherapy in Washington.

"I don't want to misrepresent this," she writes. "My reaction was to get ready for battle, but I wasn't always strong. I wasn't even strong all that first day. I had times along this path when I wanted to say I've had enough, I can't keep dealing with the latest side effect, the latest setback, the latest scare. I'd be in great pain or just not be able to do things I'd always done, and I'd say I know I have to kill this dragon, but the killing it is killing me."

Edwards says it helped that her cancer was not the worst news she had ever received. She describes in detail her intense grief over losing her teenage son, Wade, in a 1996 automobile accident. During her daily visits to his grave in Oakwood Cemetery in Raleigh, Edwards says, she read to him books from the senior year reading list that he missed.

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