The Possibility of Everything: A Memoir

 
Look for the discussion guide inside


In the autumn of 2000, Hope Edelman was a woman adrift, questioning her marriage, her profession, and her place in the larger world. Feeling vulnerable and isolated, she was primed for change. The Possibility of Everything is the story of the change that found her. A chronicle of her extraordinary leap of faith, it begins when her three-year-old daughter, Maya, starts exhibiting unusual and disruptive behavior. Confused and worried, Edelman and her husband make an unorthodox decision: They take Maya to Belize, suspending disbelief and chasing the promise of an alternative cure. This deeply affecting, beautifully written memoir of a family’s emotional journey and a mother’s intense love explores what Edelman and her husband went looking for in the jungle and what they ultimately discovered—as parents, as spouses, and as ordinary people—about the things that possess and destroy, or that can heal us all.