This boy we made A memoir of motherhood, genetics, and facing the unknown

Essayist Harris weaves a medical mystery, love story, parenting memoir, and tale of survival in her stunning debut. When Harris's sweet-natured 22-month-old boy, Tophs, started showing a host of inexplicable symptoms--including hypoglycemia, developmental delays, and speech and language difficulties--she was forced to reckon with the ways in which his health issues stoked anxiety issues that she'd spent most of her life battling. In writing that is heartfelt and raw, she recounts her distress at the evasive explanations that she received from doctors as her son underwent test after test, while braiding in reflections on motherhood ("Being a Black mother in a... country, built for whites was hard"), faith, and the idea of existing within liminal spaces: "Caught somewhere between 'no longer' and 'not yet'.... It was getting harder to see what, if anything, was being formed in Tophs, in me, or in us as a family through this search for answers." Though medical professionals believed Tophs had ketotic hypoglycemia, a condition in which blood glucose levels drop unexpectedly, Harris and her husband never received a conclusive diagnosis. But out of that uncertainty grew a love and calmness that Harris couldn't have foreseen, and a story of acceptance that mesmerizes with its vulnerability: "He had always been my son.... It was my job to let him be." This is astounding. Agent: Bridget Matzie, Aevitas Creative Management. (Jan.)

A Black woman with an anxiety disorder chronicles the process of caring for her son, whose undiagnosed illness thrust the family into uncertainty. Just before his second birthday, Harris' youngest child, Tophs, woke up listless, silent, and thirsty. When Harris felt his racing heart, her gut told her that something was wrong--but she wasn't sure if she could trust her gut. A lifetime of managing an anxiety disorder made her feel like she was constantly overreacting to something. Luckily, she overcame her doubts and took her son to the hospital, where the doctors found that his glucose was dangerously low and recommended the start of a process that eventually became years of shuttling her son among geneticists, endocrinologists, and neurologists. While waiting for a diagnosis that would never come, Harris and her husband battled reluctant school systems to get their son the special services he needed, a struggle complicated by their family's Blackness. "The city needed fewer Black boys in special education, and my Black boy almost got caught up in the quota," writes the author. "Maybe it wasn't an intentional scheme, surely it wasn't a written policy, but it could derail lives of the most vulnerable nonetheless." Throughout, Harris describes struggling with anxiety, leaning on her Christian faith, and coping with the discovery that she carries a gene that put her at risk for cancer. She leaned on her family and faith to help her live with the reality that her high-needs child would probably never receive a diagnosis and that she would have to parent him without fully understanding his body or his brain. The author deploys humor and delight to infuse the narrative with nuance and hope, and her frank, vulnerable voice makes the book feel like a conversation with a close friend. At times, though, the prose is overwritten, and the flashback-laden timeline can be confusing. A compelling, insightful memoir about parenting through the unknown. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.