Underestimated: An Autism Miracle - Hardcover

by J. B. Handley (Author), Jamison Handley (Author)

The incredibly moving and inspiring story about a quest to finally be heard.

In Underestimated: An Autism Miracle, Generation Rescue's cofounder J.B. Handley and his teenage son Jamison tell the remarkable story of Jamison's journey to find a method of communication that allowed him to show the world that he was a brilliant, wise, generous, and complex individual who had been misunderstood and underestimated by everyone in his life.

Jamison's emergence at the age of seventeen from his self-described "prison of silence" took place over a profoundly emotional and dramatic twelve-month period that is retold from his father's perspective. The book reads like a spy thriller while allowing the reader to share in the complex emotions of both exhilaration and anguish that accompany Jamison's journey for him and his family. Once Jamison's extraordinary story has been told, Jamison takes over the narrative to share the story from his perspective, allowing the world to hear from someone who many had dismissed and cast aside as incapable.

Jamison's remarkable transformation challenges the conventional wisdom surrounding autism, a disability impacting 1 in 36 Americans. Many scientists still consider nonspeakers with autism--a full 40 percent of those on the autism spectrum--to be "mentally retarded." Is it possible that the experts are wrong about several million people? Are all the nonspeakers like Jamison?

Underestimated: An Autism Miracle will touch your heart, inspire you, remind you of the power of love, and ultimately leave you asking tough questions about how many more Jamisons might be waiting for their chance to be freed from their prison of silence, too. And, for the millions of parents of children with autism, the book offers a detailed description of a communication method that may give millions of people with autism back their voice.

Author Biography

J.B. Handley is the best-selling author of How to End the Autism Epidemic. Together with his wife Lisa, he founded Generation Rescue, a nonprofit organization dedicated to autism recovery. He and his wife also produced the documentary film Autism Yesterday. J.B. founded Swander Pace Capital, a middle-market private equity firm with more than $1.5 billion under management where he served as managing director for two decades. He is an honors graduate of Stanford University and lives in Portland, Oregon, with Lisa and their three children.

Jamison Handley is an eighteen-year-old nonspeaker who was diagnosed with autism when he was two years old. Thanks to a new communication method called Spelling to Communicate, Jamison is now able to fully communicate and switched from a "life skills" classroom to a regular academic classroom at his high school and will be graduating in 2022. He plans to attend college and study neuroscience. Jamison hopes to inspire others with his story and dedicate his life to advocating for the rights of all nonspeakers. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his family.