Wonder Girl: A Memoir of Motherhood, Mayhem, and Medical Mystery

By Jeannine Amber

A spellbinding memoir of a mother's fight to save her daughter from a mysterious brain illness.

It began with a seizure on a Brooklyn sidewalk just as fourteen-year-old Niko was preparing to enter one of the country's most competitive high schools. Her immune system had gone haywire and was attacking her brain. Eventually, the once happy, high-achieving teen could no longer read, write, or speak, and her behavior grew increasingly dangerous and erratic.

Niko was diagnosed with a catastrophic autoimmune condition--a blow that would challenge everything her mother, journalist Jeannine Amber, thought she knew about motherhood, love and resilience. Desperate for answers, Amber plunged into the medical literature and unearthed a shocking link between her daughter's condition, historical accounts of "demonic possession," and a medical mystery unsolved for nearly a century.
Told with unflinching honesty and audacious humor, Amber's story is one of scientific intrigue, hard-fought recovery, and the remarkable power of a mother's love.

Telling her story with unflinching honesty, humor, and fiery prose, Amber confronts the most daunting challenge of her life -- how to save her child from disappearing --in an astonishing tale of scientific intrigue, hard-fought recovery, and the remarkable power of a mother's love.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0778333051
• ISBN13: 9780778333050
• Release Date: June 2026
• Publisher: Park Row
• Length: 352 Pages