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Cahalan was a promising young reporter when she woke up one morning and began going insane. She and her family believed there was an underlying medical issue, but doctors weren’t convinced. Both a terrifying medical mystery and a moving portrait of one family’s dedication, this is a powerful, completely engrossing memoir. Not for hypochondriacs!
— Flannery
“A young reporter's near-death experience started with what seemed to be a bedbug bite, followed by an out-of-character migraine. Cahalan forgot a pitch meeting. She snooped on her boyfriend's email. Beloved newspaper clippings were tossed. Garbage piled up in her apartment. And then the seizures began. This compelling story of one woman's descent into madness and the equally horrifying journey of her family to find suitable help works both as a great literary memoir as well as a well-reported medical mystery. You might say the result is Girl, Interrupted with a dash of The Hot Zone and a sprinkling of The Exorcist!”
— Daniel Goldin, Boswell Book Company, Milwaukee, WI
HEATHER HENDERSON has brought her authentic, resonant voice and a full cast of characters (from a Scots nanny to a Fargo housewife) to hundreds of projects during her 20-year career. She earned her doctorate at the Yale School of Drama, and her credits include production dramaturgy on the world premiere of August Wilson’s Fences. She has published arts features and reviews in newspapers across the U.S. and has won awards for poetry and screenwriting. What seems to impress people most, though, is that she was an extra in Animal House.
“A fast-paced and well-researched trek through a medical mystery to a hard-won recovery.”
Publishers Weekly
“Echoing the blend of memoir and journalism, narrator Heather Henderson modulates the story’s shifting emotional undercurrent with her careful use of tone and pacing. . . . Henderson’s voice is crisp, clear, and remarkably unfazed by the . . . medical terminology.”
—AudioFile
“A remarkably well-written and well-read account.”
—Booklist