Publisher's Synopsis
Santino is a sweet and intelligent boy, who by the age of nine, has been diagnosed with profound autism and severe bipolar disorder. For the past eighteen months, he has been hospitalized at the best hospitals in North America, where prominent pediatric psychiatrists have helped him control his self-harming behaviors. Despite being so young and unable to speak, Santi never gives up his pursuit of getting better and connecting with those who love him, making everyone who walks through his life feel blessed with the warmth of his being.
This frank and moving story tells the constant struggle of his mother, Marina, who strives to keep her disabled son, her family, and her own personal life afloat while tirelessly battling the bureaucracy and dehumanization of the medical, educational, and disability systems, all compounded by the challenges of a global pandemic.
Geographically located between the cornfields of the American Midwest and the hills of Tucuman in Argentina, the narrative details all aspects of life and humanizes the characters through their joy, pain, helplessness, family arguments, and even their sexuality within that anguish.
This exciting, challenging, and complex novel forces readers to leave their comfort zone and enter a world about which very little is said, and experience through its characters all the emotions only a child like Santino can provide.
*Intended for mature audience only.
