What happens when you have life on a string--Yale law degree, wonderful husband, excellent health, and perfect first child--and then everything changes? The baby starts crossing her eyes. Her crying at night can't be soothed. She stops saying words, stops crawling, and sits wringing her hands all day. Hospital visits and doctors give no answers. The baby slips away to a place her parents can't reach. Susan Zimmermann tells the story of life with her daughter, Katherine, who developed normally until she was more than a year old, then developed Rett Syndrome without warning. Zimmermann writes of her experience with honesty and candor, but goes beyond that to describe the odyssey she and her husband undertook to embrace, and eventually accept, their family's altered life. This story of family dynamics and personal transformation reminds us that itt isn't what happens to us that shapes our humanity, but how we respond. Keeping Katherine is a soul-searching journey through grief, loss, hope, anger, and despair to a place of unconditional love. --- from the publisher Critical Praise "Susan Zimmermann's deeply moving book will touch all people, not only parents. Her courage, her joy, and her hope reach through her tragedy and offer us all a way of life that is creative, no matter what the circumstances." --Madeleine L'Engle, Newbery Award-winning author "Susan Zimmermann portrays, with honesty, passion, and wisdom, a chapter of her life that is both deeply terrifying and wholly inspiring. It is a story of loss and gain, pain and joy, and--above all--profound truth. It is a story with the power to change your life." --T. A. Barron, author of Heartlight, The Ancient One, and The Lost Years of Merlin series "Susan's story--and Kat's--is a profound gift. Susan reminds us that it isn't what happens to us that determines our life, but how we respond to it." --Marilyn Van Derbur, author of Miss America By Day |