Mom's Cancer

Book excerpt: A cartoonist chronicles how he and his grown siblings dealt with their mother’s cancer diagnosis and treatment in this Eisner Award–winning graphic novel. Mom’s Cancer is a graphic novel about one family’s struggle with metastatic lung cancer. Honest, unflinching, and sometimes humorous, it is a look at the practical and emotional effect that serious illness can have on patients and their families. In the end, it is a story of hope—uniquely told in words and illustrations. Praise for Mom’s Cancer Winner of the 2005 Eisner Award, Best Digital Comic for the original Web version Winner of the Harvey Award, Best New Talent “The clean, simple comic-strip quality of Fies’s art fits the story perfectly, highlighting the gravity of the situation while cutting away undue sentimentality. Mom’s Cancer is a quiet, courageous account of one family's response to a universal situation.” —Publishers Weekly “In a suave comic-strip style rather like those of Gary Trudeau…and Berkeley Breathed . . . Fies traces the events of his mother’s illness primarily from the perspective of her three children, including “nurse sis” and “kid sis” (adult but the youngest) as well as himself. . . . Depicting a family dependably if warily dealing, not without anger and feelings of inadequacy, with each crisis and change that cancer brings, Fies’ book may be one of the most well-balanced contributions to the literature of coping with cancer.” —Booklist