If you’re looking to cry in empathy with an author’s grief and hardships yet sense an undercurrent of hope, this memoir might be the book for you. Jonathan Tepper grew up as a missionary kid in Madrid, Spain. His parents tried to “save” people for heaven in a new church, but failed. Then they pivoted their ministry to help people overcome heroin addiction, and they slowly grew a church and social service. However, the HIV/AIDS crisis hit in the 1980s, and intravenous drug users were among the most vulnerable groups to the deadly disease. Until HAART treatment mitigated AIDS, Tepper’s childhood was spent grieving fellow church members who deteriorated and died.
If that hardship isn’t enough, his family experienced some turmoil as well. They experienced personal loss. At times, they had trouble affording missionary school for their children. The children didn’t grow up around scientific labs but focused on books alone. Tepper found his world in books, always present in their well-educated parents’ home. His father was at Harvard Business School before following a missionary’s path, and both parents’ love of learning rubbed off in the Tepper children’s lives.
To conclude his tale of youth, Tepper became a Rhodes Scholar at the University of North Carolina to study for two years at Oxford University. This scholarship is the most prestigious academic honor in the United States after an undergraduate degree. The entire story, though defined by hardship and death, is told with a resilient hope amidst the grief. Instead of just advertising hardship, it captures universal human themes like finding meaning in suffering.
This book should find a wide readership. It will appeal to religious and philosophical types, those valuing education and self-learning, anyone who loves an underdog story, and public-health types who appreciate the pandemic of HIV in the 1980s and early 1990s. It left me with tears across multiple chapters yet with my heart warmed. There aren’t a lot of books about the HIV crisis among intravenous drug users, and this book gratefully fills a gap in the literature about this issue. Above all, it addresses the deep, human question of what to do with too pervasive human suffering. With all these themes coalescing in one tale, I hope the best for its launch.
Shooting Up: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Addiction
By Jonathan Tepper
Copyright (c) 2026
Coming in February 2026
Infinite Books
ISBN13 9781964378138
Page Count: 294
Genre: Memoir, HIV/AIDS
www.amazon.com