Finding Magic Mountain: Life with Five Glorious Kids and a Rogue Gene Called FOP [Paperback]

Carol Zapata-Whelan (Author), Michael Henrickson (Afterword), Frederick S. Kaplan (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2006

Carol Zapata-Whelan describes her son's struggle with the rare genetic disease Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva (FOP), focusing on the time of diagnosis at age nine to his first year in college (he matriculated as a pre-med student at the University of California, Berkeley, in September 2004). Zapata-Whelan illustrates how this struggle with FOP has shaped and strengthened her family, and how, as a mother, the experience has taught her to put her trust in the universe, and live life one day at a time. Through her son's remarkable grace and strength in dealing with his disease, she has learned that an unexpected encounter with suffering can be a blessing as well. Through flashbacks and anecdotes, Zapata-Whelan leads the reader through the ups and downs of dealing with FOP in everyday life, while offering insight, hope and guidance throughout.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Praise for Carol Zapata-Whelan’s Finding Magic Mountain

"Carol Zapata-Whelan’s informed and energetic account of her family’s medical nightmare is interwoven with spiritual questions of universal significance. This true tale of a remarkably strong and mature young man on his way to medical school will leave readers inspired and humbled by Vincent’s courage, his mother’s perseverance, his father’s steady faith, and the whole lively family’s gift of hope."
—MARGARITA ENGLE, author of The Poet Slave of Cuba: A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano

"Carol Zapata-Whelan takes us on a powerful journey of the human spirit no one would ever choose."
—MAS MASUMOTO, farmer and author of Epitaph for a Peach

"The study of rare genetic disorders can yield the most striking insights about everyday health. Finding Magic Mountain shares some of this process of discovery, but more importantly, it illustrates the lessons a mother learns about optimism, courage, and acceptance in the midst of battle with her son’s rarest of rare genetic disorders, FOP. Anyone facing a rare disease, a common condition, or just a hard day, will find hope and solace in this mother’s story."
—HUGO W. MOSER, MD, director of the Neurogenetics Research Center at the Kennedy Krieger Institute, professor of Neurology and Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University

"The example, the courage, and the testimony Zapata-Whelan and her family offer in this book are going to be a great help for many other patients and families. Don’t give up, Carol! You are putting in the right ingredients: love, good professional care, and confidence in research. Your investment will pay off someday."
—JOSÉ CARRERAS, award-winning opera singer

"At once inspiring and heartbreaking, Carol Zapata-Whelan’s story probes the capacity of a family to deal with an inexorable enemy within. The family proves that enduring Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva with grace and courage is as important as prevailing. FOP offers ‘no way out,’ but Zapata-Whelan and her family carry on, fight back, and see the long term as well as the short in the face of what seem to be impossible odds. As a result, this is a book about humans functioning very near the top of their spiritual abilities."
—GERALD HASLAM, author of Haslam’s Valley and Workin’ Man Blues

About the Author

Carol Zapata-Whelan, PhD, raised between Argentina and the U.S., earned her doctorate in comparative literature at UCLA, is lecturer in Spanish and Hispanic Literature at Cal State University, Fresno, and the mother of five children. Her writing about FOP has been published in Newsweek, Exceptional Parent Magazine, Angel Over My Shoulder: 40 True Stories of Angelic Encounters (Fair Winds), Diario Uno, El Andar, and Under the Fifth Sun: Latino Literature from California (Heyday), which won the American Book Award in 2002 (and where Zapata-Whelan's work appears alongside writers including Carlos Fuentes and Isabel Allende), and has appeared through Hispanic Link News Service (affiliated with the Los Angeles Times News Syndicate). Additional work appears in Chicken Soup for the Latino Soul and TK. In 200X Zapata-Whelan won an award for short ficton featuring FOP from the National League of American PEN Women. She lives with her husband and her four youngest children in Clovis, Calif.; her son Vincent enrolled in September 2004 as a pre-med student at UC Berkeley.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (August 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569244006
• ISBN-13: 978-1569244005
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,946,949 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars FOP's Warrior Mother, November 8, 2006

By 

Prosana - See all my reviews

This review is from: Finding Magic Mountain: Life with Five Glorious Kids and a Rogue Gene Called FOP (Paperback)

Finding Magic Mountain: Life with Five Glorious Kids and a Rogue Gene Called FOP (Avalon Publishing Group) constitutes nothing less than operating instructions on how to grow emotional calluses and take life on, on its own terms. In her fast-moving memoir about a large lively family pulling together over the musculoskeletal disorder FOP, which appears in her son Vincent's ninth year, Carol Zapata-Whelan tells a story of hope and epiphanies. She won't let the reader into the full impact of FOP until her story is well underway, and then crafts a breathtaking scene around the opening of a manila envelope: "As my husband and I sat in the family room that night, absorbing the words on those Xeroxed pages, it was as if all sound and motion had stopped and that white room with blue couches was a bell jar, or a frozen frame in a film, or even that instant when the electricity goes and you suddenly hear the silence under ordinary life." We are given a roadmap through disbelief, denial, rage, bargaining and an uneasy truce that might be called acceptance: It is Elizabeth Kubler Ross's work that Zapata-Whelan leads us through, keeping her point of view--as mother--straight. As a writer, I appreciate the fluid narrative structure of Zapata-Whelan's book and how she makes a universal statement of coping with suffering out of the particulars of her life: her tardiness, her Latinness, her otherworldliness, her rapport with husband and children, with the Old World grandparents. It is, ultimately, from her son Vincent's grace and steadiness that Zapata-Whelan learns about joy along life's toughest roads.
I loved this book for the warrior path that the author blazes through her example of love, courage, and bravery in the face of overwhelming heartbreak.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Tale of Courage, Humor, and Love, August 5, 2006

By 

John Bengtson (Walnut Creek, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Finding Magic Mountain: Life with Five Glorious Kids and a Rogue Gene Called FOP (Paperback)

With self-effacing humor and grace, Carol Zapata-Whelan chronicles her son Vincent's ongoing journey with a rare genetic disease, and the gifts of faith, humility, and acceptance that sustain them along the way. Juggling a family of five children ranging in age from college to kindergarten, Ms. Zapata-Whelan writes about life, parenting, and spirituality, citing both our greatest poets and the playground wisdom of four-year-olds along the way. A testament to a son's courage and a mother's perseverance and love, this book's inspiring message will stay with you for a long time to come.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pure Magic, September 14, 2006

By 

Theresa C. Caruso "reading fan" (Las Vegas, NV USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Finding Magic Mountain: Life with Five Glorious Kids and a Rogue Gene Called FOP (Paperback)

As someone with the disease, FOP, I thought this book
would be something different than what it is- but it is wonderful.
It is everyday life grafted suddenly into a road less traveled by
few, but exclaims a spirit of endurance that is universal. Zapata-
Whelan is real and identifiable in her life as a hurried but
dedicated mom, university professor, and instant advocate for her
son, Vincent. The only other books I can remember reading and not
able to put down until every last word was read were The Bell Jar,
by Sylvia Plath, and a book by Garcia Marquez where there is love
in the midst of a war zone. In the war zone of fop, and the sadness
and joy that follows the events unfolding in their lives, this must-
read is one you won't be able to put down.