Growing up as the daughter of a dedicated surgeon, Elizabeth L. Silver felt an unquestioned faith in medicine. When her six-week-old daughter, Abby, was rushed to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit with sudden seizures, her relationship to medicine began to change. The mysterious circumstances of Abby’s hospitalization attract dozens of specialists, none of whom can offer a conclusive answer about what went wrong or what the future holds. As Silver explores what it means to cope with uncertainty as a patient and parent, she looks beyond her own story for comfort, probing literature and religion, examining the practice of medicine throughout history, and reporting the experiences of doctors, patients and fellow caretakers.

Noa P. Singleton was found guilty of first-degree murder 10 years ago. Now, just six months away from her execution date, Noa is visited by Marlene Dixon, an attorney who is also the heartbroken mother of the woman Noa was imprisoned for killing. She tells Noa that she has had a change of heart and will do everything in her power to convince the governor to commute the sentence to life in prison --- if Noa will finally reveal what led her to commit her crime.