Relates how the death of the author's photojournalist son at the hands of an angry mob in Somalia led her to transform her grief into something positive by embracing the role of philanthropist and activist to preserve his legacy.

"Winner of the Center for Fiction's Doheny Prize Mike Scalise hits his stride in this page-turner of a memoir featuring a sudden and strange sequence of medical disasters. From its gripping ruptured-brain-tumor emergency room opening, through a series of medical procedures and oddball doctors, Scalise creates a sharply observed, uproariously funny, and deeply moving account of acromegaly, the hormone disorder best known for causing gigantism. Scalise...

"The adventure tale and intimate true story of a boy on the run with his mother, a housewife turned radical who kidnapped her son and set off for South America in search of the revolution. Carol Andreas was a traditional 1950s housewife from a small Mennonite town in central Kansas who became a radical feminist and Marxist revolutionary. From the late sixties to the early eighties, she went through multiple husbands and countless lovers while living...