Published by Harmony (Hardcover) & Vintage (Paperback),

Random House imprints

In a voice that is fresh, funny, and wise, Dan Shapiro offers life-affirming and surprising revelations from his experiences fighting Hodgkin's disease, falling in love with a nurse, and finally, learning what life is all about.

When Dan Shapiro was a junior at Vassar, he was diagnosed with cancer. When he informed his vehemently anti-drug mom that he had been told marijuana could ease the effects of chemotherapy, she refused to listen. But she was also his mother, he was her son, and life had changed the rules. A gardener, renowned in the neighborhood for her prodigious crops, she quietly tended 10 bushy cannabis plants that grew to tower over her sun flower screen -- more pot than he could have smoked in a lifetime.

Mom's Marijuana is about life in all of its wondrous unpredictrability. Dan's recollections are optimistic, biting, unmistakably real, and deeply hopeful.

Reader's guide | The birth of the book | Authors examining larger themes using illness

Translations of Mom's Marijuana
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Last updated April 18, 2003