Joe O'Brien is a forty-four-year-old police officer from the Irish Catholic neighbourhood of Charlestown, Massachusetts. A devoted husband, proud father of four children in their twenties, and respected officer, when Joe begins experiencing bouts of disorganised thinking, uncharacteristic temper outbursts, and strange, involuntary movements, he initially attributes these episodes to stress.
Finally, he agrees to see a neurologist and is handed a diagnosis that will change his and his family's lives forever: Huntington's Disease. Huntington's is a lethal neurodegenerative disease with no treatment and no cure. Each of Joe's four children has a 50 percent chance of inheriting their father's disease.
While watching her potential future in her father's escalating symptoms, Joe's twenty-one-year-old daughter Katie wrestles with the questions this test imposes on her young adult life. Praised for writing that "explores the resilience of the human spirit" (The San Francisco Chronicle), Lisa Genova has once again delivered a novel as powerful and unforgettable as the human insights at its core.
