Turning Weeds into Wildflowers

When fifteen-year-old dancer Alexis Gould is diagnosed with high-risk neuroblastoma, her family's world is upended by chemo, surgeries, transplants, and a 30 percent survival rate. Told by her mother Emily, this deeply personal memoir walks through seventeen months of hospital stays, priesthood blessings, community love, and hard-won faith. It is an honest, tender, and ultimately hopeful account of choosing happiness amid heartbreak—proof that even in life's darkest storms, wildflowers grow among the weeds.

• A real-life modern miracle: doctors remove an entire tumor thought inoperable, and a mother witnesses the priesthood promise fulfilled.
• 'This is a happy story'—a raw, honest memoir that proves happiness is a choice even when everything goes wrong.
• Co-written by mother and daughter, offering both a parent's heartbreak and a teen's unshakable faith.
• An entire Utah community rallies—benefit concerts, a donated home remodel—showing charity as the pure love of Christ in action.

“This story is about the kind of happiness that lasts—the kind that is founded on our responses to life, not our circumstances.”

Perfect for a Latter-day Saint parent or family member facing serious illness or grief who wants a faith-centered, real-life story of enduring hardship with hope.