The Wild Mandrake

A young writer on the cusp of adulthood is faced with cancer that keeps coming back.

Doctors used to tell him he was cured. That was a long time ago. Ever since he first left home, writer Jason Jobin has had cancer. Every five years, like clockwork, it relapses, and yet he always pulls through. Chemotherapy, surgeries, radiation; these are the milestones of his adulthood, of being “a special case.”

It seems like every time he gets balanced — new writing, love, a job paying more than minimum wage — he’s back in hospital. And he lives. Again and again, he is cured. It is miraculous. A great gift. But never enough.

Told in short glimpses, this story redefines what it means to survive. Jobin brings together the illuminated moments of loss and joy as he navigates chronic illness and builds from it something new and wildly unexpected.