Quite a thought provoking book that tugs at your heart strings while teaching the readers about caring for children with disabilities.

This is the story of a family whose firstborn has multiple disabilities, possibly due to the author contracting chicken pox during the pregnancy. It is a story of bureaucracy, frustration, and incredible resilience. Short read, but it will stay with you long after you finish it.

Recommended for anyone who appreciates non-fiction tales of the human condition.

I was nervous going into this. But I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised by the love, honesty, and unfiltered emotions portrayed. The author clearly does not look at autism as a disability or problem to be fixed, but as something that makes her child unique, and just another aspect to love.

Deeply moving account of life as a parent of a child with multiple disabilities. The author leaves out nothing when describing both the joys and the pain and suffering she and her family have endured while raising Felix, her son with cerebral palsy and autism. Instead of pity, this memoir provides a sense of hope and inspiration to all parents of children of all abilities. Even through the descriptions of the more difficult episodes that Felix and his family encountered, I could not put this book down. The entire range of my emotional bandwidth was stimulated and engaged by this memoir.

No one plans to have a child with disabilities. When Eliza Factor's son began missing developmental milestones and exhibiting atypical behaviors, it dawned on her that his childhood was not going to be like most kids. In her book Strange Beauty: A Portrait of My Son, she chronicles the challenges and joys of life with Felix, her oldest child. Felix, who lives with cerebral palsy, autism, and endures self-destructive fits of slapping and hitting himself, has been a puzzle for Factor and her family to unravel.


Other parents of children with disabilities will cry and laugh with Factor as she describes the slow realization that Felix has a disability, the mix of pain and pleasure she experienced when a label was finally placed on him, and the challenge of finding the right doctors, specialists, and therapists. Navigating the health care system is tough enough, but when a child has a variety of disabilities, it can be especially tough. She writes, "Even I, in New York, with a good insurance plan, extra money when our insurance plan refused to cooperate, and a flexible schedule, could not perform up to par." I was reminded how thankful I am for my wife who, like Factor, has had to fill out countless forms (repeating the same information about medical history again and again), spent long hours on the phone with insurance companies and social service agencies attempting to get the right care and benefits, and keeping up with the various programs for which our children qualify.


One of their great challenges was finding the right educational setting for Felix. After some truly horrible experiences, where the schools had no idea how to handle his dangerous fits, they found some schools that supported him well. They worked with the Department of Education, which of course has bureaucratic challenges galore, but also with private schools, as they have the means to pay tuition if needed. Yet finding the right fit was still a great challenge. As the book ends, Factor determined that the schools Felix has attended aren't the best place for him, and home school isn't a good option, so she has found a residential school a few hours drive from home. Given the tone of the rest of the book, I was surprised when she even started considering residential placement for Felix. But as she describes the school where he ended up, it sounds like a place where he will thrive.


A large part of Factor's story is creating a space where Felix and other kids with disabilities can socialize and play in a setting that suits their unique needs. She created a new organization with play rooms that feature large swings, ball pits, bean bag chairs, and other equipment on which kids with sensory integration issues, mobility issues, autism, and other disabilities and challenges can play, relax, and socialize. In this setting, she has taken the challenges she has faced as a parent and directed her knowledge and energy to enrich other families. I love the idea. It's inspiring and encouraging. (If you're interested, check out extremekidsandcrew.org)


Factor doesn't hold much back as she describes her life with Felix. Parents who have children living with disabilities will be encouraged by her steadfastness and her determination to find what is best for Felix and to let her experiences spill over into other families' lives.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

This book a beautiful, challenging and thought-provoking work on the struggles -and unique beauties- of a mother who raises a son with disabilities. The writing style was talented, pleasant and flowed naturally and I, as the reader, kept feeling the same feelings that the protagonist experienced. I was laughing during the joyous moments, I was crying when darkness arrived around the corner.

What made me completely fall in love with this book is the fact that Eliza Factor was completely honest and straightforward on everything she included in this book. She didn't sugarcoat the hardships of raising a son with autism and physical disabilities and she knows how to make her readers want to learn even more about this pair of gorgeous human beings -mother and son.

I wholeheartedly adored this book and I would strongly recommend it to anyone who's even a bit interested in the premise. Happy reading!

God never said He wouldn’t give you more than you can handle. There will be times in life when you will feel like you are drowning and there is no one to help you. However, there is always hope and your determination to follow through no matter what and that is what Eliza Factor and her husband do.

In this beautifully written and poignant memoir, Eliza describes the struggles she and her husband go through trying to raise and provide a loving caring environment for their severely disabled son, Felix. Their love for Felix transcends obstacles that for many of us would have been insurmountable.

Felix was born both disabled and autistic. He offers the family which eventually also includes two younger sisters joy and happiness but also gives them bouts of head banging and fits of rage in which he hits himself, draws blood often, and has seizures. The Factors run the gauntlet of seeing doctors, clinicians, psychologists, blending new age medicine as well as established practices, with a bevy of drugs in the hopes of providing Felix with quality of life. As Felix grows his instances of uncontrollable rage increase and the family, through Eliza's intense ability to search continually for answers, finds a place where Felix can thrive.

As I reads through this memoir, I could not fully comprehend the sacrifices The Factors made for Felix. They tailored their family life, with the help of countless people, schools, and places for Felix to have the very best possible way of life. In this pursuit, Eliza eventually founded a community center that unites children with disabilities and their parents giving them a place to come together, to share, and to find others that face similar circumstances in the zeal to help their child have a better life.

The work she is able to do, the things that she is able to accomplish with a lack of sleep always, is amazing. She is driven by an overwhelming love for her son who is charming, joyous, and endearing at times while unable to speak or function at a level we all seem to consider "normal." Eliza points to the fact that there really is little help and guidance for parents who have a severely disabled child and as much as we would like to think we provide for them we really do not.

Felix is one of the lucky ones. Eliza is able to find a location for him that will provide a wonderful place for learning, growing, and feeling secure. She was fortunate in her ability to stay at home with a large number of people hired to help her with Felix. She claims she is not a good mother as often people tell her she is. However, I disagree, for in this telling memoir, we see the best of what mother can be.

Thank you to NetGalley and Parallax Press for providing an advanced copy of this book.

As the mother of an Autistic child, I've read my share of books and articles on the subject, but this was the first book I've read from a mother's point of view. Granted her circumstances are very different than mine, both financially and severity of her son's disabilities, but I felt a sort of kinship with her. It is oddly comforting to know that others have the same dread at the monotonous paperwork, meetings, therapies and IEP evaluations just to get your "special needs" child help so they may be a little better off in life. One of the gifts I took away from this book was the realization that I don't have to feel guilty of my sleep deprived and frustrated thoughts about my son. I felt lighter for having read Eliza's story and to know it's ok to ask for help when you have hit your limit.

I would recommend this book to anyone with a special needs child or even readers that like memoirs.

A truly thought provoking read, so honest that you can feel the highs and lows throughout the book. This story offers fantastic insight into the battles families face and how children can become symptoms instead of children. Thank you for sharing this with us

Strange Beauty by Eliza Factor was an amazing read. It charts, in a very open and honest way and sometimes with a touch of humor, the story of her son, Felix, from his birth and diagnosis with physical disabilities and autism to special and significant moments in his life.

As a person with multiple physical disabilities myself, I could identify with many parts of the story and especially with the daily fight they faced. The story is so engrossing, and I could really see the personality of Eliza, her husband Felix and his sisters coming through throughout the course of the book. Felix's determination in everything he does as well as that of all the family was very well represented.

The flow and pace were exactly right, so much so that I read it in a day. Thanks so much to Eliza and her family as well as the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced Kindle ecopy prior to publication. The mention of the YouTube channel as a place to find Felix and the Factor family was a beautiful and special touch to the book as I could see the family and how they lived their life and put a face to their names.

I love the way the author is real and honest in the struggles and beauty of raising her son. Her discussion of society's expectations of "normal" challenge and encourage the reader in a number of ways to view the world differently and to look for new ways to accept self and others.

Oh how I loved this book! I suspect that if I waxed lyrical about what a wonderful person Eliza Factor is, that she would not agree or welcome gushing praise but her honesty and humanity shines through the pages of this book. I suffer from a purely physical disability and my eldest son suffers from ASD, ADHD and now as an adult he also has mental health diagnoses as well. How I wish I'd lived in New York and been parenting him when Eliza set up Extreme Kids and Crew! What Eliza says about just letting the kids be. No limits, no arbitrary rules, just allowing them to be their natural selves and exhibit their usual traits is so powerful and something I wish had been pointed out to me, as a young mother as being important. My son liked to run, back and forth between walls or doors and his whole childhood was made up of people telling him not to. I wish I had, had the confidence to allow him to be more of himself rather than obsessing over trying to make him copy neurotypical children. My own struggle with disability had me nodding along and sardonically laughing at the family's struggles with public transport and bureaucracy when it comes to applying for help, financial support etc.
Eliza's writing style is warm, friendly and markedly honest. I know, having finished this book, that this wasn't a sugar coating, waxing lyrical about disability without mentioning the sadness, the guilt, the anger. All of those are mentioned in spades and with love and often humour. I really felt that I could feel and hear Felix and was so pleased that Eliza gave hints as to where to find a YouTube video of him and a news segment about Extreme Kids so that I could put his face to the things I already felt I knew about him. It also opened a dialogue in my head of how the American health system, something I don't envy at all, can actually in the field of disability, hold advantages over our NHS where we can't choose our specialists or request appointments without our family Dr referring us.
I recommend this book to anyone, but for those whose life is affected by disability in any way I think it is a must read.

I worked with Special Needs kids the majority of my adult life, I know the love and patients you need to take care of them. I praise her for the consistency, the patients she had for her son. I had a really hard time sticking with this story because it was long and drugged out.