Akron Public Library

"What are you reading?" That's the quest Will Schwalbe asks his mother, Mary Anne, as they sit in the waiting room of the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. In 2007, Mary Anne returned from a humanitarian trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan suffering from what her doctors believed was a rare type of hepatitis. Months later she was diagnosed with a form of advanced pancreatic cancer. This is the inspiring story of a son and his mother, who start a "book club"...

In the twenty-third year of their marriage, Sonya Lea's husband, Richard, went in for surgery to treat a rare appendix cancer. When he came out, he had no recollection of their life together: how they met, their wedding day, the births of their two children. All of it was gone, along with the rockier parts of their past - her drinking, his anger. Richard could now hardly speak, emote, or create memories from moment to moment. Who he'd been no longer...

Sara and Brian live an idyllic life with their young son and daughter. Suddenly, their baby girl falls ill, and her only hope for survival rests in her parents' ability to find a compatible bone marrow donator. Their desperate decision to conceive another child raises both ethical and moral questions and begins to erode their relationship. Their actions ultimately set off a court case that threatens to tear the family apart.