Soon to be a major motion picture, from Brad Pitt and Tony Kushner
A Washington Post Best Book of 2015
A mid-century doctor's raw, unvarnished account of his own descent into madness, and his daughter's attempt to piece his life back together and make sense of her own.
Texas-born and Harvard-educated, Dr. Perry Baird was a rising medical star in the late 1920s and 1930s. Early in his career, ahead of his time, he grew fascinated with identifying the biochemical root of manic depression, just as he began to suffer from it himself. By the time the results of his groundbreaking experiments were published, Dr. Baird had been institutionalized multiple times, his medical license revoked, and his wife and daughters estranged. He later received a lobotomy and died from a consequent seizure, his research incomplete, his achievements unrecognized.
Mimi Baird grew up never fully knowing this story, as her family went silent about the father who had been absent for most of her childhood. Decades later, a string of extraordinary coincidences led to the recovery of a manuscript which Dr. Baird had worked on throughout his brutal institutionalization, confinement, and escape. This remarkable document, reflecting periods of both manic exhilaration and clear-headed health, presents a startling portrait of a man who was a uniquely astute observer of his own condition, struggling with a disease for which there was no cure, racing against time to unlock the key to treatment before his illness became impossible to manage.
Fifty years after being told her father would forever be “ill” and “away,” Mimi Baird set off on a quest to piece together the memoir and the man. In time her fingers became stained with the lead of the pencil he had used to write his manuscript, as she devoted herself to understanding who he was, why he disappeared, and what legacy she had inherited. The result of his extraordinary record and her journey to bring his name to light is He Wanted the Moon, an unforgettable testament to the reaches of the mind and the redeeming power of a determined heart.
Manic depression, now known as bi-polar disorder, is a heart-breaking disease. As with most mental illnesses, it affects not only the person suffering, but also their friends and family members in ways often unthinkable for those unaffected. How much more suffering would be felt if the person with the disease was a doctor - and one who had studied the mental illness he was beginning to suffer from?
Mimi Baird "lost" her father as a very young girl. She was not told about her father's illness or what had happened to him - simply that he was "away". It wasn't until she was an adult that she learned the truth, and was given a unique manuscript written by her father *while he was suffering from his disease*. As she began to put the pieces together, she soon forged a look at the father she barely knew - but had never forgotten.
He Wanted the Moon is an apt title for this story. While it is an interesting look inside a patient suffering from manic depression during a time when such a thing was VERY misunderstood, it feels a bit incomplete. For those not familiar with this disease, or with the "treatments" given to patients during this time, there is a lot left unsaid. I realize Ms. Baird was primarily interested in her father's treatment and history, however more information into standard processes, other famous sufferers, and so on would have given a better basis for a fuller picture of the disease as a whole and her father's place within it.
Having said that - it is a look into the disease that most do not get and that most sufferers are incapable of giving. I can't imagine the despair for an analytical mind like Dr. Baird's as he realized he was slipping further and further into madness. And while his aftermath was covered somewhat quickly, I wonder if he even knew at the end how much of him was lost.
