How many times have you heard someone laugh off his eccentricities with a flippant, "Oh, that's just my OCD coming out?" How many times have you chuckled knowingly, remembering your own neuroses - the way you have to make your bed just so, or how you can't stand it if the toilet paper is on the holder in the improper position, or the way that you can't stop yourself from sweeping up every crumb that hits the floor as soon it lands? I dare you to laugh about OCD after reading the first four pages of Saving Sammy: Curing the Boy Who Caught OCD by Beth Alison Maloney. You won't. I guarantee it.
Maloney's story begins the summer her middle son, Sammy, turns 12. A smart, happy child, he enjoyed competing in mathathons, playing Dungeons & Dragons with his friends, and hunting for treasures along the shoreline near his home in Kennebunkport, Maine. Then, Maloney buys a new home, moving herself and her three boys away from the beachfront rental home they'd come to love. His parents' recent divorce, plus the stress of moving, seems to traumatize Sammy. Beth watches as he takes up strange behaviors - walking around with his eyes shut, navigating only with his hands; refusing to sleep in his new bedroom; avoiding physical contact; spinning, hopping and jerking at odd times. What begins as puzzling soon becomes alarming. Sammy's compulsions start to take over his life - he can't leave the house without performing a complicated routine; he won't shower, brush his teeth, or change his clothes; he can't stand having windows open or the sight of bare feet or the sound of loud breathing. He apologizes constantly for inconveniencing his family, but he can't seem to control his need for things to be a certain way.

Terrified, Beth searches for a doctor willing to see Sammy, finally landing in the New Hampshire office of psychiatrist Dr. Drill. His diagnosis? Obsessive compulsive disorder. The answer makes sense, but Beth's still troubled. With its sudden onset and no family history of OCD, she can't fathom how her son ended up with the condition. Still, she follows the doctor's advice. As Sammy's symptoms get worse and worse, Beth knows there's more to it than OCD. Second diagnosis? Tourette's. Despite the usual medications used to treat the disease, Sammy's still no better. His obsessions keep him confined to the house, where the family has to walk on eggshells so as not to disturb his fragile psyche. Exhausted, depressed and terrified, Beth vows to help her son. No matter what it takes. When her research leads to a controversial study linking OCD to strep throat, she thinks she's finally found her answer. The only problem lies in convincing Sammy's doctors. With stubborn determination, she braces herself for war, battling doctors, researchers and anyone who stands in the way of her son and the cure she knows is out there. Long after others would have given up, she fights. She won't stop until she has her Sammy back. And she doesn't.

Saving Sammy is an incredible, absorbing story that is as troubling as it is inspiring. My heart ached for the boy whose compulsions made his life a living hell; for his brothers, who dreaded being at home; and especially for Beth, whose agony is palpable. Her story is a rebuke of the doctors who stubbornly refused to look beyond their beloved studies, letting patients suffer before allowing themselves to move past their foregone conclusions. It's a call-to-action, urging parents everywhere to stand up for their sick children. Mostly, it's a testimony to the strength and perserverance of a mother who refused to back down. And to the boy she brought back from the very brink of insanity. It's a story you're not going to believe, and one you won't soon forget.

Grade: A

If this were a movie, it would be rated: PG for mature themes

To the FTC, with love: I received Saving Sammy from TLC Book Tours. The fact that I received the book free of charge has nothing to do with the way I graded it - I gave it an A because that's exactly what it deserves.

Every would-be writer knows about story beginnings - those ideas that sit in our computers, middleless, endless, going nowhere. Somehow, although we know just how to start the tale, we're not quite sure where to go from there. And so, a potential story sits and sits, perhaps wholly forgotten, perhaps lingering somewhere in the back of its creator's mind. But, imagine if there was a place - a magical place somewhere between reality and fantasy - where these story fragments got a chance at life, where your abandoned characters decided their own fates. How would their stories end? How would yours?

The Book of Story Beginnings by Kristin Kladstrup starts with the mysterious disappearance of 14-year-old Oscar Martin, who vanishes in the summer of 1914. Although his sister Lavonne insists she saw her brother exit the house, climb into a rowboat, and paddle out to sea, it's obvious that grief is making her hysterical. After all, the Martins' big white house sits smack in the middle of Iowa farm country. No ocean for miles and miles. It's much more likely that the lad, tired of farm chores, has run off to seek his fortune in some more exciting locale. Whatever happened, Oscar's never heard from again. Despite Lavonne's never-ending search for her brother, his fate remains an unsolved mystery.

Nearly a century later, Lucy Martin is fascinated by the old story about her great-uncle's midnight boat ride. Especially since she and her parents will soon be living in the very house from which Oscar disappeared. Lucy's not thrilled about trading her apartment in the city for a farmhouse in the country, but her family needs a change, especially since her father's just been denied tenure at the city college where he teaches. Her mother's constantly worried about money - inheriting a house will go a long way toward easing the family's financial burdens. Luckily, The Brick, which has been in the Martin Family for years, turns out to be a more interesting home than Lucy ever imagined. While her mother's locked in her office working, and her father's in the attic trying to turn lead into gold, Lucy's left to explore. She discovers a pile of her great-uncle's writings. Among his things is an old leather-bound volume called The Book of Story Beginnings. In it, more than one writer has scribbled his ideas. When she comes across this passage, she gasps in recognition:

Once upon a time, there was a boy who lived in a farmhouse high on a hill in the middle of nowhere. Below the hill lay endless fields of corn and more corn, divided by long, dull roads that went on forever before they came to anywhere that was somewhere. The boy liked to imagine that his house was surrounded by the sea and that he could sail forth from his home to find adventure. Such thoughts seemed no more than a dream to him. Then one night, as he sat alone in his room, he had a feeling that something strange had happened outside. When he went to look, he saw that his dream had come true. His house on the hill was surrounded by a great black sea. And in the moonlight, he saw a little boat waiting for him on shore" (58-59).

Not fully understanding what she's found, Lucy decides to start her own story, never imagining that an innocent sentence like "Once upon a time, there was a girl whose father was a magician" (63) could turn out to be so dangerous. Soon, Lucy's in the middle of her own tale, her long-gone uncle by her side, on a perilous journey to find her father. It's a madcap adventure through time and space, a voyage full of magic, mischief and menace. Can Lucy and Oscar navigate their way through the strange world of their fictionalized hopes and dreams well enough to rescue Lucy's father? Can they orchestrate a happy ending for themselves or are they at the mercy of a fairy tale gone awry?

I have one word for The Book of Story Beginnings: Charming. It's a book lover's book, all about the power stories have over us. It's the kind of tale that awakens the deepest fantasies of readers and writers, teasing us with the possibility of traveling inside our favorite fictional worlds, even those that we, ourselves, have created. It's imaginative, enchanting and fun. A timeless adventure story for dreamers of all ages, The Book of Story Beginnings is not to be missed.

Grade: A-

If this were a movie, it would be rated: PG for fantasy adventure/peril

To the FTC, with love: Another freebie - What can I say? I heart my library.