Saturday, March 9, 2019

In 2009, the New York Post reporter, then 24, was hospitalized after seeming to lose her mind. In addition to violent seizures, she was wracked by terrifying hallucinations, intense mood swings, insomnia and fierce paranoia. Cahalan spent a month in the hospital before doctors diagnosed her with a rare autoimmune disorder. Cahalan, who has since recovered, remembers almost nothing about her month-long hospitalization. But the best reporters never stop asking questions. In Brain on Fire, the journalist reconstructs – through hospital security videotapes and interviews with her friends, family and the doctors who finally managed to save her life – her hellish experience as a victim of anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis. The result is a kind of anti-memoir, an out-of-body personal account of a young woman's fight to survive, and on every level, it's remarkable. Registration is not required. For more information visit www.cityofparkland.org/library or call (954) 757-4207.