MAVERICK MIND: A Mother's Story of Solving the Mystery of Her Unreachable, Unteachable, Silent Son

Florance, a speech-language pathologist in Ohio, was holding her newborn son, Whitney, when she suspected something was wrong—he wasn't at all responsive. As time passed, her suspicions only worsened; loud noises didn't startle him, he made no sounds and he seemed detached. Believing that labeling a problem leads to a focus on the negative, Florance rejected the diagnosis of autism, but that didn't make the symptoms—frequent bouts of perseverating behavior ("persistent repetition of a verbal or motor response"), insistence on complicated rituals, aloofness, etc.—disappear. Focusing on the positive did help her notice signs of Whitney's intelligence, though. He'd destroy a household appliance, but was fascinated with its inner workings. He'd wander off unpredictably, but find his way to a shop they'd visited only once. Florance began to theorize that Whitney's visual thought process was so advanced, it had shut down his verbal ability. Together with her two older children, she developed a method of teaching Whitney to read and to think sequentially based on visual, rather than verbal cues. Inspired by Helen Keller and determined not to institutionalize Whitney, the family found techniques to teach Whitney to read, talk, interact with others and function successfully in mainstream classrooms. Florance and Whitney, now age 17, are together using their techniques to help other "maverick minds" (their term for people with high visual/associational thought processes and low verbal/sequencing processing) to function better in our verbally oriented world. Florance's insights into cognitive development will intrigue general readers, and parents of "disturbed" children will admire the author's perseverance. Agent, Mike Shatzkin. (Jan. 5)

Forecast: Florance's insistence on not medicating her son places her squarely in the "alternative" mainstream. Her book should attract readers from that category, as well as communication disorder professionals.