Description: 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 then she suddenly had a change of heart and came home waving a three-foot bong over her head. When Dan brought home the tiny bag of weed, his mom -- renowned in the neighborhood for her crops of zucchini and tomatoes -- held out her hand and said "give me the seeds." Eleven-foot-high marijuana plants, at first coyly hidden by a row of sunflowers, soon towered over the backyard. It would be nine years before Dan, by then a parent himself, would fully understand how his mother could turn around so quickly, sacrificing her firm beliefs for the comfort of her child.

At times hilarious, but always intimate, honest, and luminous, "Mom's Marijuana" takes us from Dan's first diagnosis to his second relapse, to -- finally -- sustained, thriving health. Whether its the decision to paint himself green to frighten his family after radiation treatment, fighting to survive while surrendering to love with an oncology nurse, or learning the meaning of life and family from events once taken for granted, Dan Shapiro tells his story with wit and grace, showing us that it's when the pulse and rhythm of life are stirred violently that we're made to learn the beauty of multitudes, of finding what it is that makes us so brutally vulnerable, plain, and godly all at once.

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