Snippets from the Trenches: a mother's AIDS memoir

The really extraordinary thing about this book is that it tells the story of how one mother embarked on her feverish course of involvement in the AIDS community, in large part to help herself come to terms with the possibility of her son's death. But all that work really doesn't prepare her. She becomes incredibly intimate with a series of strangers, yet she and her son have more and more trouble talking about HIS illness, which is the reason she is doing all this in the first place. She becomes indispensable at the bedsides of countless other people, but when Gary is dying, she still feels helpless, disconnected and as if she'd never set foot in an AIDS hospital room. What is moving about this book is the fact that all this preparation doesn't prepare, because NOTHING can prepare her." Susan Choi, Pulitzer Prize finalist, American Woman