cover image Sam: The Boy Behind the Mask

Sam: The Boy Behind the Mask

Tom Hallman. Putnam Adult, $22.95 (224pp) ISBN 978-0-399-14933-7

Veteran journalist Hallman expands his Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of Sam Lightner, a boy born with a rare, disfiguring growth on his face, into a heart-breaking saga of the emotional, physical and psychological battles Sam and his family have fought since his birth in 1985. The growth, a ""tangle of lymphatic capillary cells"" beneath the skin of Sam's face, necessitates two surgeries before Sam is even a week old; when the boy nearly dies after a 1989 operation, his parents decide that surgery to remove the mass is out of the question until Sam himself demands it. Hallman, a reporter at the Portland Oregonian who first met Sam in 1999, tenderly chronicles Sam's childhood and early adolescence: his difficulties fitting in at school, his inability to participate in activities with other children, his yearning to lead a more normal life. In 2000, Sam undergoes surgery in Boston. Initially it seems successful, but back in Portland, Sam slips into a coma. His pediatric neurosurgeon and his parents are the only ones who believe he will live; eventually Sam proves them right. Hallman's writing is crisp and affecting, though also sometimes overly dramatic and simplistic. He portrays Sam's doctors, for example, as wholly altruistic beings (a portrayal not entirely unjustified) and glosses over some of the more personal, and painful, emotions his parents must have felt watching their child suffer. Still, this is a deeply moving story, an against-all-odds tale of bravery and faith. 8 pages b&w photos.