Translated from the French by Nancy Huston.

This is a mother's memoir of how she and her family navigated and overcame the pitfalls of medical consensus, educational narrow-mindedness, and their own expectations, and get their little boy ready for the journey of a life.

At two and a half years of age, Anton Loupan is diagnosed with a nameless neurological syndrome of unknown origin, affecting his motor skills and capacity for speech. The news plunges his parents into a state of shock and a vague and pessimistic prognosis with no clear path for treatment leave them in despair. The young boy's life becomes a harrowing passage from specialist to specialist and institution to institution. While the medical profession consider his disoder too insignificant to treat, the education system considers him too at a disadvantage to receive a conventional education. He has slipped through the cracks of the medical profession. Only Professor Reuven Feuerstein, who developed therapies for the traumatized children who survived the Holocaust, seems interested in Anton's case, and takes him on. To have him follow Anton, the family travels to Jerusalem. Dr. Feuerstein's care and attention bring the boy out, and the family's journey to Israel becomes the journey to their own personal promised land.