“Honest, gripping, and eye-opening . . . A must-read for any parent of a child who is ‘different.’”—Randye Kaye, author of
Ben Behind His Voices
When Jenny Lexhed and her husband have their first child, Lucas, they are living the dream. They’re happily married, they’ve just bought a house, and the company they built together is starting to blossom. But with the arrival of their son, a feeling of anxiety slips into their life. What starts as a feeling becomes a conviction. Lucas is not like other children. Everything seems to indicate, and psychiatric evaluation concludes, that their son is severely autistic. Will he ever be able to communicate?
Jenny vows to do whatever she can to help Lucas connect with his parents and others and live an independent life. Tossed between hope and despair, she begins a frantic effort to research the best among many competing therapies and find exactly the right treatment for her son. Her obsession takes her to the brink of exhaustion—and over, when she suffers a psychotic breakdown and is committed to a psychiatric clinic. There begins another journey, to find her balance and recover her strong, healthy life, before she can begin again to fight for her son.