Mercies In Disguise: A Story of Hope, A Family's Genetic Destiny, and the Science That Rescued Them

By: Gina Kolata

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Synopsis: If your family carried a mutated gene that foretold brutal illness and you could find out if you inherited it, would you do it? Would you confront it, accepting whatever the answer was? Or ignore it while you could? In Mercies in Disguise, acclaimed New York Times reporter and best-selling author Gina Kolata tells the story of the Baxleys, an upstanding family in small-town South Carolina. Some family members were doctors; still, they are baffled by an inscrutable illness. Finally, after a remarkable sequence of providential events, they discover the cause of the disease. Science, meanwhile, progressing for fifty years along a parallel track, handed the Baxleys not a cure but the answer to a question--a blood test that would reveal who had the gene for the disease--and a dilemma: fertility specialists had created a way to spare the children. Mercies in Disguise tells the story of a family who took matters into their own hands when medicine could not help. It's a story of a family who must deal with unspeakable tragedy without being driven apart. And it's the story of a young woman--Amanda Baxley--who faced the future, determined to find a way to disrupt her destiny. GINA KOLATA is a writer and medical reporter for The New York Times. She has previously written five books and edited three collections of popular science writing. Ms. Kolata lives with her husband in Princeton, New Jersey.