The Law of White Spaces is composed of five compelling case studies, unified by their obsession with what Oliver Sacks has called "the quintessential human condition of sickness."
Doctor Abraham Fleischmann suddenly fails to remember the name of his best friend. Months later, he stands at his brother's graveside, unable to utter more than one phrase of the prayer for the dead. Vera looks like a beautiful six-year-old. But she is sixteen. Over a period of twenty years, three brothers contract different diseases with identical symptoms. When two of the brothers die, the third is infected with a mortal fear.
Gentle in their telling, ruthlessly honest in their conclusions, these stories testify to one character's declaration that "everything is written in the white spaces between one letter and the next. The rest doesn't count."