The Lazarus Child

Struggling to cope with a marriage in difficulty and a business under pressure, Jack and Alison Heywood suffer every parent's worst nightmare. Their two children are involved in a horrific road accident which leaves seven-year-old Frankie in a coma and her elder brother, Ben, severely traumatized. After three months, little Frankie has become simply the coma case in room four, fifth floor. Worse still, prolonging her existence may be damaging Ben, who is withdrawing further and further into an emotionally turbulent world of his own. But then, with all hope fading, a slender lifeline emerges. The Heywoods hear of a revolutionary, experimental clinic in America, run by brilliant neurologist, Elizabeth Chase. Lizzie knows what it is like to be a young person locked away in a dark place and it is this that fuels her work on the frontiers between unconscious existence and oblivion. But her work is high pressure and high risk, pushing at the very limits of accepted medical practice. As the Heywoods arrive in America, they find Lizzie and her clinic beseiged by the law, the media, human rights activists and the medical establishment. Against this background, and with the children stranded in uncharted regions of the subconscious, only a supreme act of sacrifice can show them the way back. Profound and immensely powerful, The Lazarus Child is an extraordinary story of hope and despair, of redemption and resurrection. With its celebration of human endeavour and healing, it stands out as a novel for our times: strange, compelling and unforgettable.