Portia Iverson - Strange Son

Pros: NONE
Cons: EVERYTHING - starting with the title

Strange Son is written solely by Portia Iverson, although it is touted as being the story of two mothers across continents with two sons who are on the autism spectrum. Portia Iverson along with her husband, Jon Shestack founded the ...

Pros: mom broke barriers to make "impossible" breakthroughs for her child.
Cons: NONE

Strange Son is the tale of author Portia Iversen's search to understand autism and to find a cure for her son through the vehicle of a young autistic Indian boy, Tito. Although he is basically nonverbal, Tito confides his extremely intelligent self observations via the keyboard, with his mother's encouragement. Iversen brings Tito and his mother Soma to the United States, befriends them, and traipses from one major autism research facility to another, in an attempt to understand how Tito thinks and how to bring Soma's teaching abilities to other families suffering from autism, including her own.


Bottom line, this is a riveting story of a mother's obsessive attempt to understand the roots of autistic behavior and thinking. Iversen's insights into autism are thoughtful and enlightening, and are ample reward in this engrossing and rather provocative story.