Gorilla and the Bird: A Memoir of Madness and a Mother's Love

Twenty-five-year-old Zack McDermott wakes up one morning convinced he is being filmed, Truman Show–style, for a TV pilot. After a manic spree around Manhattan, Zack, who is bipolar, is arrested and admitted to Bellevue Hospital.So begins Zack’s free fall into psychosis and his desperate, poignant, often darkly funny struggle to claw his way back to sanity. His copilot on this journey—which will land him in prison-like mental wards and take him back to his Kansas roots—is his tough, big-hearted midwestern mother, nicknamed the Bird, whose fierce and steadfast love might be the one thing that can help Zack find his way back to himself.Written with raw honesty, humor, and tenderness, Gorilla and the Bird is a moving portrait of a powerful mother-son bond.