Wonder Girl

A Memoir of Motherhood, Mayhem, and Medical Mystery

By: Jeannine Amber

A spellbinding memoir of a mother’s fight to save her daughter from a mysterious brain illness.

It began with a seizure on a Brooklyn sidewalk just as fourteen-year-old Niko was preparing to enter one of the country’s most competitive high schools. Her immune system had gone haywire and was attacking her brain. Eventually, the once happy, high-achieving teen could no longer read, write, or speak, and her behavior grew increasingly dangerous and erratic.

Niko was diagnosed with a catastrophic autoimmune condition—a blow that would challenge everything her mother, journalist Jeannine Amber, thought she knew about motherhood, love and resilience. Desperate for answers, Amber plunged into the medical literature and unearthed a shocking link between her daughter’s condition, historical accounts of “demonic possession,” and a medical mystery unsolved for nearly a century.
Told with unflinching honesty and audacious humor, Amber’s story is one of scientific intrigue, hard-fought recovery, and the remarkable power of a mother’s love.

Telling her story with unflinching honesty, humor, and fiery prose, Amber confronts the most daunting challenge of her life — how to save her child from disappearing —in an astonishing tale of scientific intrigue, hard-fought recovery, and the remarkable power of a mother’s love.