Mercies In Disguise: A Story of Hope, a Family's Genetic Destiny, and the Science That Rescued Them - Hardcover

"[Kolata's] book recalls two other classic tales of medical anthropology, Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down." --The Washington Post "...a moving, suspenseful page-turner that's likely to become a classic of medical storytelling." --The Washington Post "Mercies in Disguise is the true story of one family's struggle with a rare and deadly inherited illness. Gina Kolata's prose brings to life the science as well as the maverick scientists who solve the riddle. When a blood test can now predict who is destined to be an invalid while still young, and who is spared, we agonize with family members over whether we'd want such knowledge. Mercies in Disguise reads like a medical thriller; I simply couldn't stop once I began." --Dr. Abraham Verghese, author of the New York Times bestseller Cutting for Stone "Mercies in Disguise is an extraordinary medical mystery, scientific history and, above all, human drama. Once I started reading, I couldn't stop. Then, when I finished it, I couldn't stop thinking about the Baxleys and the choices they faced." --Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography "Absorbing... the interweaving tales of science, family, and medical ethics make for a compelling read." --Library Journal "Gripping...Kolata's book reads like a medical thriller." --Publishers Weekly "A story that pits hope against fate, courage against uncertainty... Kolata delivers an inspiring chronicle of a remarkable family, medical advances, and redefining destiny." --Booklist

The phone rings; the doctor has the results. "Are you ready Amanda?" The two people Amanda Baxley loves the most had begged her not to be tested. But she had to find out. If your family carried a mutated gene that foretold brutal illness and you could find out if you inherited it, would you do it? Would you confront it, accepting whatever answer came? Or ignore it while you could? In Mercies in Disguise, acclaimed New York Times reporter and bestselling author Gina Kolata tells the story of the Baxleys, an upstanding family in small town South Carolina. Many of them were doctors, but still, they are struck down by an inscrutable illness. Finally, they discover the cause of the disease after a remarkable sequence of providential events. Meanwhile, science, progressing for 50 years along a parallel track, handed the Baxleys a question--not a cure, but a blood test that would reveal who had the gene for the disease. Science offered another dilemma--fertility specialists had created a way to spare the children. A work of narrative nonfiction in the tradition of the The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Mercies in Disguise tells the story of a family that took matters into its own hands when medicine could not help. It's a story of a family dealing with unspeakable tragedy without being driven apart. It is the story of a young woman--Amanda Baxley--who faced the future, determined to find a way to disrupt her destiny.