The First Family: A Novel

A riveting new medical thriller from the critically acclaimed novelists.

Cam Hilliard is, in addition to being the President's sixteen-year-old son, a chess prodigy. A year into President Hilliard's second term Cam inexplicably stops playing the game he loved and becomes withdrawn. The First Lady is convinced that the senior White House physician is wrong in diagnosing Cam's issue as a psychological one, and she demands that Dr. Lee Blackwood be brought on to provide a second opinion. Lee's opinion is dismissed, until Cam's spleen ruptures and it becomes obvious that something is horribly wrong.

Lee informs the President and First Lady that to make a diagnosis they need to find other people with the same symptoms to conduct additional testing. From there, it's possible to identify the gene defects and correlate those to the missing enzymes. Only then can a diagnosis be made and treatment begun. For now, they must face the harsh reality that Cam's genes are...