A new science called neuroplasticity is overthrowing the old notion that the human brain is immutable. Psychoanalyst Doidge traveled the country to meet both the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity and the people whose lives they've transformed--people whose mental limitations or brain damage were seen as unalterable. We see a woman born with half a brain that rewired itself to work as a whole, blind people who learn to see, learning...

"When Sarah Vallance is thrown from a horse and suffers a jarring blow to the head, she believes she's walked away unscathed. The next morning, things take a sharp turn as she's led from work to the emergency room. By the end of the week, a neurologist delivers a devastating prognosis: Sarah suffered a traumatic brain injury that has caused her IQ to plummet, with no hope of recovery. Her brain has irrevocably changed. Afraid of judgment and deemed...

The story of a sick baby bird nursed back to health and into the wild. When Jemima, a young orphaned blue jay, is brought to wildlife rehabilitator Zickefoose, she is a virtually tailless, palm-sized bundle of gray-blue fluff. Though starved and very sick, she is nursed back to health and raised for eventual release. In the meantime, Jemima takes over the house and the rest of the author's summer. Shortly after release Jemima turns up with a deadly...

When a young boy nurses an injured hawk back to health, he gains newfound courage and confidence.

"The story of a woman on the run from catastrophe, searching for love, home, healing, a swimming pool, and perhaps someone who can stop the bleeding from her head"-- Allison Brody is thirty-two and newly arrived on the East Coast after just managing to flee her movie producer boyfriend. She has some money, saved up from years of writing and waitressing, and so she spends it, buying a small house on the beach. But then a Category 3 hurricane makes...

Bethany Hamilton, a teenage surfer lost her arm in a shark attack off the coast of Kauai, Hawaii. Not even the loss of her arm keeps her from returning to surfing, the sport she loves.

After suffering a near-fatal freediving accident, seventeen-year-old Addie Spencer tags along on her mother's honeymoon to a private island where she unearths dark secrets--a child ghost, moody flowers, and a deep pool where no one feels pain--before realizing the island might not be willing to let her go. Eulalie Island should be a paradise, but to Addie Spencer, it's more like a prison. Forced to tag along to the remote island on her mother's honeymoon,...

When Natalie Shelton thinks back to how things were before the car accident, she remembers a great marriage. She and her husband, Zack, seem as strong and dependable together as the houses he builds. They live in Portland, Oregon, and Natalie is co-owner of a successful accounting firm. They're happy, she's almost sure of it. Yet as Natalie lies trapped in a coma, unable to communicate though aware of everything around her, she realizes that her husband...