Words for a Deaf Daughter and Gala: A Fictional Sequel

This volume brings together two of Paul West’s best books: his critically acclaimed Words for a Deaf Daughter (1970), a nonfiction account of West’s deaf and brain-damaged daughter Mandy at age eight, and Gala (1976), a novel about a writer named Wight Deulius who brings his handicapped teenage daughter Michaela from England to America for a visit. While Words is an account of Mandy’s diagnosis and treatment, Gala is the scenario of a wish-fulfillment (as West writes in the preface), a continuation of the father and daughter’s joyful investigation of the richness of life and its amazing possibilities. Ranging across natural history and astronomy in his effort to understand his daughter’s handicap, West finds in Mandy/Michaela an irrepressible and unpredictable guide to the mysteries of the universe. Brought together in the same volume, the books also allow a unique look at how nonfiction and fiction techniques can be used to the same ends in the hands of a master of prose.