There is little about Alua Arthur that emanates the deathly or morbid. The 45-year-old Los Angeles resident has a radiant, gap-toothed smile, a propensity for citrus-colored nail polish and an inclination to laugh before she finishes a sentence.
But not long ago, she was a Legal Aid worker struggling with depression, frequently taking breaks to travel around the world, attend music festivals, visit friends and enjoy short-lived romances with fellow searchers. While backpacking in Cuba, she boarded a bus and sat next to a woman around her age who revealed that she had been diagnosed with uterine cancer. What followed was an hours-long conversation that sent her world off its axis.
