The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman

Now with a new Afterword from the author

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down explores the clash between a small county hospital in California and a refugee family from Laos over the care of Lia Lee, a Hmong child diagnosed with severe epilepsy.

Lia's parents and her doctors both wanted what was best for Lia, but the lack of understanding between them led to tragedy. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest, and the Salon Book Award, Anne Fadiman's compassionate account of this cultural impasse is literary journalism at its finest.

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Lia Lee 1982-2012

Lia Lee died on August 31, 2012. She was thirty years old and had been in a vegetative state since the age of four. Until the day of her death, her family cared for her lovingly at home.

The Wine Lover's Daughter, a book about her father (FSG, 2017), is written by Anne Fadiman. The Spirit Catches You and You Fell Down (FSG, 1997) earned the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Salon Book Award for her debut novel. Fadiman is also the editor of Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love (all published by FSG), and the author of two essay collections, At Large and At Small and Ex Libris. At Yale, she is the Francis Writer-in-Residence.