The Book of Kehls Book

When Bridget Moore left Ireland in 1865, she never suspected that along with her trunk and rosary beads, she was bringing Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy to New York City. It wasn't until Bridget was a grandmother, one who had buried four of her grandsons, that she realized she'd brought MD to the States, a disease that would haunt her family for generations. Years later, her great-grandchildren grew up under the elevated trains of Jackson Heights, Queens—and one of them was Christine Kehl O'Hagan, the author of this moving and insightful memoir.

Christine, her sister Pam, and their brother Richie played in the streets and attended mass every Sunday. But Richie had trouble walking. By the time he was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, Christine learned that two of her mother's brothers—uncles she'd never known about—had died of MD. Christine eventually married and had a healthy son. But one day she saw her second boy, Jamie, struggle to climb onto the school bus—and she knew knew then and there that this disease would be with her the rest of her life.

Extraordinarily written, with much honesty and humor, The Book of Kehls is the engaging story of a family that has known love, courage, and heartbreak in equal measure—and survived.

Publishers Weekly

"Don't you feel so guilty passing it on?" O'Hagan asks another mom who's also passed fatal Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) to her son. It's "God's will," the woman answers, but in spite of O'Hagan's Catholic upbringing, she finds little comfort in the thought that God would want to afflict innocent boys. O'Hagan lays out the basics of DMD: one in 4,000 males are born with the hereditary disease, passed via a faulty X gene. Females can be asymptomatic carriers, but if they pass a faulty X to a male offspring, he'll end up with DMD. O'Hagan's brother, son and two nephews were all born with no apparent symptoms, but the DMD was undeniable when the boys had trouble walking and climbing stairs, and kept falling down. O'Hagan watched her parents care for and then bury her only brother; when she realized she'd passed DMD to her own son, her grief was almost unbearable. Still, she stayed with him continually until his death at 24. Though missing him tremendously, O'Hagan worked through her anguish and learned how to live like a "regular" person. O'Hagan's story is extremely depressing, her pain raw and messy. Though marketed as a memoir, this is really a disease/grief book. While the book may resonate with parents of children with other similar illnesses, memoir readers lured by the book's Irish-Catholic title should look elsewhere. Agent, Ann Rittenberg. (Jan.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.