The Cure - The Book, Not The Rock Band

I don’t read as many books The Gotham Gal, not even close. But when I go on vacation, I always try to read three or four books.

So far, I’ve read two The Ghost Map and The Cure. I’ve added a list of the books I am reading on vacation to the right sidebar, above the flickr badge. You can click on them and you’ll be taken to Amazon where you can buy them.

Like most things in my life these days, this book got to me via blogging. Mike Orren who is a regular reader and commenter sent me an email on October 30th telling me I had to read it and included a link to a WSJ review of the book.

The story is about a young HBS graduate just starting out his career when he finds out that two of his three kids have a rare but deadly disease called Pompe. He becomes obsessed with finding a cure, leaves his job, joins a promising biotech startup working on a Pompe cure, raises a ton of venture money, almost gets himself fired by his VCs, and I’ll leave the rest of the story alone for those of you who want to read the book.

The author Geeta Anand is a WSJ  journalist who came across this story on her beat and decided to make a book of it. But it’s really much more than a business book. It’s a story of a mother and father who are dealt a really lousy set of cards and they play an amazing hand. Most of all its a story of parental love. And I couldn’t put it down.

Long before I found the time to read it, I mentioned Mike’s email to The Gotham Gal and our friends Amy and Brad Feld at a dinner in NYC in early November. Both Joanne and Brad read it and blogged it back in November. I would bet Amy read it too, but I couldn’t find any mention of it on her blog.

And after Joanne blogged it, she got a comment from the brother of the guy, John Crowly, that the book was about. And I think she also got a really nice email from his mom, but I can’t link to that.

It never ceases to amaze me and The Gotham Gal how much connectivity our blogs create.