As a registered nurse, Gail Stewart Frare knew too well all the terrible medical possibilities that could devastate a person, and couldn’t help but fret over her two sons, Jeff and Christopher. By the time Christopher entered his teen years as healthy as his older brother, her worries subsided. Then the unspeakable happened.

While on a spring break trip to visit Jeff, fifteen-year-old Christopher nearly died from a virus-induced heart failure—becoming one of the only six in one hundred thousand people who suffer from post viral cardiomyopathy. Shortly thereafter, he had to undergo heart transplant surgery. The transplant was successful, but eventually his medication made him vulnerable to an aggressive form of cancer, and he died at the age of twenty-two.

After his death, Frare found an entry in her son’s journal declaring, “True, unadulterated joy in my life is to write at least one piece of literary mastery.” Painkillers and Gummi Bears is a coauthored mother-son memoir about facing fear, enduring pain, and choosing love. In writing it, the author holds out the very real hope that what you suffer will not ultimately crush you.