Imagining Robert

Description for IMAGINING ROBERT: MY BROTHER, MADNESS, AND SURVIVAL by Jay Neugeboren:

Anyone who has ever loved an emotionally troubled person will draw inspiration from this remarkable story of brotherly love.Jay Neugeboren and his brother, Robert, grew up in Brooklyn in the years following World War II. Both brothers -- smart, popular, and well-adjusted -- seemed well on the way to successful lives when for reasons that remain mysterious to this day Robert had a mental breakdown at age nineteen. For the past thirty years Jay has been not only his brother's friend and confidante, but his sole caretaker as Robert continues to suffer from the ravages of chronic mental illness, which has also kept him institutionalized for most of his life.

IMAGINING ROBERT is the most honest book to date on the lives of the millions of families that must cope, day by day and year by year, over the course of a lifetime, with a condition for which, in most cases, there is no cure. By rendering his brother in all his complexity and mystery, Jay Neugeboren has shown how even the grimmest of lives can be sustained by the power of love.