“This is a relentlessly realistic work about what it is like to live with and die from a chronic fatal illness. “Christine was, at last, so alive, and that is the quality that her mother so vividly portrays in this lovely memoir.”įrank Deford, author of Alex: The Life of a Child We at the Muppets all loved Christine-a beautiful and sensitive soul, a lover of life but I never knew, until I read this book, just how brave and strong a fighter she was.” “This is a terrific book, which I recommend highly. Listed among ALA’s Best Books for Young Adults 1988. Readers of Give Me One Wish will never forget her rich journey and her wonderful victories. Replete with passages from Christine’s ten journals, Give Me One Wish tells the healing story of a beautiful girl who never stopped trying to live and who succeeds beyond all expectation. You will not be able to put down this enthralling book that gives us a rare and intimate chronicle of a teenage girl growing up in the 70’s and 80’s. And in her familiar hospital room, with her family by her side, she lost everything to cystic fibrosis three weeks after she turned twenty-one. Chris had everything except one thing: good health.

She returns to her mother’s care, not as a resentful teenager, but as a beautiful and fiery young woman determined to share with her mother what she has learned of life. Defying the terror of her illness, she spends her life rejoicing.Īt college, eager for independence, illness forces her home in the very first semester. At graduation, she wins the Headmaster’s Award for “educating the school in the most profound sense.”Ĭhristine leads us on a funny, heartbreaking, exhilarating path: Through rock and roll from the Sex Pistols to U2 … through slam dancing and Christian Fellowship … through getting fake I.D.’s and saying her prayers … through oxygen masks and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, through the Muppets and dyeing her hair purple, to singing with a band to catapulting herself onstage to kiss her favorite rock star. In her senior year, fearful that her illness makes her unappealing, she finds a love that will touch the heart of every reader. Her wit and style hide her illness and turn ordinary moments into events. Jacquie Gordon cannot cure her daughter Christine’s cystic fibrosis, but she can teach her to follow life’s gifts so that she grows up fearless and ready to discover her place in the world. This is the story of a remarkable mother and daughter and their love as they make sense of life and their relationship in the face of a deadly disease.

Give Me One Wish by Jacquie Gordon