Description

A searing account of a father’s struggle to save his remarkable son from a rare heart condition that threatens his life—“a powerful and lyric portrait of a son and a vibrant family” (Toni Morrison).

Damon Weber is a brilliant kid—a skilled actor and a natural leader at school. Born with a congenital heart defect that required surgery when he was a baby, Damon’s spirit and independence have always been a source of pride to his parents, who vigilantly look for any signs of danger.

Unbowed by frequent medical checkups, Damon proves to be a talent on stage, appears in David Milch’s HBO series Deadwood, and maintains an active social life, whenever he has the energy. But running through Damon’s coming-of-age in the shadow of affliction is another story: his father Doron’s relentless search for answers in a race against time.

Immortal Bird is a stirring, gorgeously written memoir of a father’s fight to save his son’s life.

About the author(s)

Doron Weber was born in Israel, grew up in New York, and was educated at Brown University and Oxford. He has worked as a newspaper boy, busboy, waiter, and taxi driver and is the coauthor of three published nonfiction books and various articles. For fifteen years he has worked at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a nonprofit that supports science and education.

Reviews

“Apowerful and lyric portrait of a son and a vibrant family.”—Toni Morrison

“I was seized by Doron Weber’s prose….We’ve gained a book of rare passion.”—Nancy Milford, author of Savage Beauty and Zelda

“I found it almost impossible to read this book, or even to see the pages, at times, through my tears. It was equally impossible to stop reading it—to turn away from its red-haired teen hero or the voice of his adoring father. The boy Damon, whose lifeis delimited by his damaged heart, emerges here as the grandest spirit in a small body since Antoine de Saint-Exupery imagined The Little Price.”—DavaSobel, author of Longitude

Immortal Bird is the best portrait of a childhood I’ve ever seen, and a moving and unforgettable evocation of the intense love between a father and a son.”—Richard Rhodes, author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb

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