Blue Sky July

Starred review from August 4, 2008
In this poetic, heartrending memoir, UK journalist and first time author Wyn relates seven years of personal struggle and small victories trying to raise and heal a son with severe cerebral palsy. Diagnosed in his first year with the most extreme form of the disability, Joe was born blind, without any hope of ever walking or communicating: "He won't even know you," the neurologist tells them. Joe's seemingly hopeless condition quickly takes over Wyn's world: "It is like death." Desperate for a cure ("Impossible," her doctor says), Wyn pursues every possible therapy-from faith healers and prayer to physical patterning and swimming-losing both her marriage and career as she falls deeper into Joe's world. Along the way she discovers the fate of other babies with cerebral palsy, given up to foster care or institutionalized as wards of the state by parents unable to cope. This difficult-to-face story is carried along effortlessly by Wyn's elegant, fractured prose and hard-won moments of triumph: "Today,/ for the very first time,/ I saw the way he seemed to prefer/ to lift his face to the wind." Any parent is sure to be enthralled, encouraged, and deeply touched.

Starred review from August 18, 2008
In this poetic, heartrending memoir, UK journalist and first time author Wyn relates seven years of personal struggle and small victories trying to raise and heal a son with severe cerebral palsy. Diagnosed in his first year with the most extreme form of the disability, Joe was born blind, without any hope of ever walking or communicating: "He won't even know you," the neurologist tells them. Joe's seemingly hopeless condition quickly takes over Wyn's world: "It is like death." Desperate for a cure ("Impossible," her doctor says), Wyn pursues every possible therapy-from faith healers and prayer to physical patterning and swimming-losing both her marriage and career as she falls deeper into Joe's world. Along the way she discovers the fate of other babies with cerebral palsy, given up to foster care or institutionalized as wards of the state by parents unable to cope. This difficult-to-face story is carried along effortlessly by Wyn's elegant, fractured prose and hard-won moments of triumph: "Today, / for the very first time, / I saw the way he seemed to prefer/ to lift his face to the wind." Any parent is sure to be enthralled, encouraged, and deeply touched.

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