“Sometimes watching him is like looking at the man in the moon...you know there is actually no man there. But if Walker is so insubstantial, why does he feel so important? What is he trying to show me?” These profound questions shape Globe and Mail writer Ian Brown's memoir about his severely disabled son. At age 13, Walker is as mentally developed as a three-year-old due to cardiofaciocutaneous syndrome (CFC), an extremely rare genetic disorder.
Brown chronicles the trials of raising Walker for the first eight years of his life and describes the agonizing decision (and endless red tape) to ultimately place him in a group home. In the second part of the book, Brown travels the continent and meets other families with CFC children and finally visits L'Arche in France, an "international network of faith-based communities centered on adults with developmental disabilities." Although I found the latter half of the book less engaging (too much about genetic research), Brown consistently writes with honesty, insight and self-criticism. The Boy in the Moon is a painful but hopeful quest to abandon the notion of Walker as "unfixable" and to accept him as whole.
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