Taylor is a successful neuroanatomist and an advocate for the mentally ill. In 1996, at age 37, a blood vessel exploded in her brain, triggering a massive stroke. This account of the event and its aftermath is not a dry presentation of medical facts but a warm retelling of how the author's family and friends helped her in her eight-year-long ordeal. Taylor manages to buttress her life experiences with solid facts without diminishing the story's personal, human aspects. She does an excellent job with the reading, speaking in a personal manner and holding listeners' attention. Moving and informative; recommended for public libraries. [Audio clip available through us.penguingroup.com; watch Taylor on Oprah's Soul Series webcast at oongua.notlong.com.--Ed.]--Stephen L. Hupp, West Virginia Univ. Lib., Parkersburg (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

In 1996, 37-year-old neuroanatomist Taylor experienced a massive stroke that erased her abilities to walk, talk, do mathematics, read, or remember details. Her remarkable story details her slow recovery of those abilities (and the cultivation of new ones) and recounts exactly what happened with her brain. Read proficiently by the author, this is a fascinating memoir of the brain's remarkable resiliency and of one woman's determination to regain her faculties and recount her experience for the benefit of others. Taylor repeatedly describes her "stroke of insight"--a tremendous gratitude for, and connection with, the cells of her body and of every living thing--and says that although she is fully recovered, she is not the same driven, type-A scientist that she was before the stroke. Her holistic approach to healing will be valuable to stroke survivors and their caregivers, who can pick up suggestions from Taylor's moving accounts of how her mother faithfully loved her back to life. A Viking hardcover. (July) Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.