Piece of Mind - Hardcover

Arresting....smart, honest and funny.

Adelman beautifully conveys Lucy's idiosyncratic voice and outlook on the world...[Adelman] resists pat, too-easy endings, and instead focuses on realistically depicting Lucy's strengths and weaknesses, humor, failings and tentative steps toward believing in her own capabilities.

As much about the bond between siblings as about traumatic brain injury.

A delightful page-turner packed full of warmth, humor, and bubbling, sparkling joy.

A moving story of grief, resilience, and self-actualization...Adelman fully inhabits Lucy's voice, and the resulting tale is as realistic as it is uplifting.

Lucy's narrative is sensitive, witty, and illuminating...excellently draw. Her journey and the evolution of her relationships offer a rare glance at the unknowable.

Lucy, the endearing narrator of this moving novel, was left brain-damaged after being hit by a truck when she was 3. When her father dies 24 years later, she struggles to survive on her own, find her place in the world and summon the courage to pursue her dreams. With simplicity and humor, her story testifies to the fierce, universal human need for expression.--Best New Books

At twenty-seven, Lucy knows everything about coffee, comic books, and Gus (the polar bear at the Central Park Zoo), and she possesses a rare gift for drawing. But since she suffered a traumatic brain injury at the age of three, she has had trouble relating to most people. She’s also uncommonly messy, woefully disorganized, and incapable of holding down a regular job. When unexpected circumstances force her out of the comfortable and protective Jewish home where she was raised and into a cramped studio apartment in New York City with her college-age younger brother, she must adapt to an entirely different life—one with no safety net. Over the course of a challenging summer, Lucy is forced to discover that she has more strengths than she herself knew.