Zig-Zag Boy

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A compassionate, heartrending memoir of a mother’s quest to understand her son’s journey through psychosis. One night in 2009, Tanya Frank finds her nineteen-year-old son, Zach—gen tle and full of promise—in the grip of what the psychiatrists would later label a psychotic break. Suddenly, Tanya is thrown into a parallel universe: Zach’s world, where the phones are bugged, his friends have joined the Mafia, and helicopters are spying on his family. In the years following Zach’s various and changing psychiatric diagnoses, Tanya struggles to find support while navigating broken mental healthcare systems, first in California and then in her native London during lockdown. Despite her fears for the future, she must learn to accept the mysteries of her son’s altered states and find her own healing in nature. With tenderness, lyricism, and generous candor, this compelling story conveys the power of a mother’s love. Zig-Zag Boy is both a moving lamentation for things lost and a brave testament to the people we become in difficult circumstances. Show more