Passing on curves

"In gripping essays from his stage performances, Craig McLaughlin travels a road where death lurks around every turn. At birth, he almost bleeds to death because of hemophilia. Despite the odds, he survives to adolescence but finds himself living on an exotic animal farm where the humans can be more menacing than the tigers. As a young adult he contracts HIV from contaminated blood products, and later struggles to care for his wife with breast cancer while disease threatens to orphan their daughter. McLaughlin shows tremendous reverence for both life and death. Readers will fear for him, cheer for him, and marvel at his resilience and ability to recover from misfortune."--