Immortal Bird: A family memoir, by Doron Weber

All of our children are exceptional, but Doron Weber’s son, Damon, was also exceptional, in a bad way, from birth.  Born with a serious heart defect and with some organs reversed, he survived early surgeries in infancy to grow into a young teen with a mop of red hair, short stature from these early problems, and an unusually bright and creative mind.  His father, a writer whose day job is directing programs for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, chronicles Damon’s courageous struggle to live as his condition worsens in his teens, ultimately necessitating a heart transplant.  It is a family story as well, as his mother and younger brother and sister are obviously affected by Damon’s situation.  The memoir is well-written and the father’s suffering, as he researches Damon’s uncommon illness and fights to save his son, makes it painful to read.  However, the family’s great fortune at knowing Nobel Laureates and famous doctors, who step in to give access to world-class care, as well as movie stars and TV producers (Damon gets a small part in the series Deadwood), occasionally make the reader wonder how a less well-situated family would fare in helping a seriously ill child who, to them, is also exceptional.  Despite one’s sympathy for the author and his pain, it is often hard to like a man who routinely browbeats over-worked medical staff and questions the wisdom of most doctors, or to believe that Damon was the quite paragon he is portrayed as being.    358 pp.