''Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story'' or simply ''Gifted Hands'' is an autobiographical book about the success story of Dr.

Ben Carson Ben Solomon Carson Sr. (born September 18, 1951) is an American retired neurosurgery, neurosurgeon, academic, author, and government official who served as the 17th United States secretary of housing and urban development from 2017 to 2021. A pio ...

, a neurosurgeon and future politician, and his life going from a failing student to leading a team of surgeons in the first known separation of

conjoined twins Conjoined twins, popularly referred to as Siamese twins, are twins joined '' in utero''. It is a very rare phenomenon, estimated to occur in anywhere between one in 50,000 births to one in 200,000 births, with a somewhat higher incidence in south ...

joined at the back of the head. Co-written by Ben Carson and Cecil Murphey, ''Gifted Hands'' was adapted into a film of the same name by director Thomas Carter in 2009. In the film, Dr. Carson was portrayed by actor Cuba Gooding Jr.

Plot

The book is based on the real events during the life of Dr. Carson. It is written in the first-person and describes how Ben, an African-American boy from the

Detroit Detroit ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Michigan, most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario. It had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 United State ...

ghettos achieves success and fame as a world-class pediatric neurosurgeon. It begins when, at age 8, Ben's father leaves the family, forcing Carson’s mother, Sonya, to raise her two sons, Ben and Curtis, alone. The Carson family faces struggles in the next years. These include both financial struggles and his mother’s mental health issues. Carson then turns to his personal struggles in school and dealing with anger. He achieves excellent grades and enters

Yale Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges ch ...

as a freshman in the premed program and continues to face challenges, including ongoing struggles for financial security and unexpected academic challenges. In his college years, Ben meets his future wife, Lacena (Candy) Rustin, with whom he shares a love of music and, eventually, commitment to the

Seventh-day Adventist Church The Seventh-day Adventist Church (SDA) is an Adventist Protestant Christian denomination which is distinguished by its observance of Saturday, the seventh day of the week in the Christian (Gregorian) and the Hebrew calendar, as the Sa ...

. Carson then focuses on his medical career. He tells how he returns to

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

for medical school, marries Candy, and then heads to

Johns Hopkins Johns Hopkins (May 19, 1795 – December 24, 1873) was an American merchant, investor, and philanthropist. Born on a plantation, he left his home to start a career at the age of 17, and settled in Baltimore, Maryland, where he remained for mos ...

for his neurosurgery residency and eventually becomes their youngest ever director of pediatric neurosurgery, in which position he continues beyond the period covered in the book. Turning his attention to his career as director of pediatric neurosurgery, Carson thinks back on key surgical advances that he made, using his “gifted hands” while relying on

God In monotheistic belief systems, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. In polytheistic belief systems, a god is "a spirit or being believed to have created, or for controlling some part of the un ...

’s guidance, most notably, the separation of two craniopagus German twins, the first such twins joined at the back of the cranium to both survive a separation.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (book) Biographies adapted into films Collaborative non-fiction books 1990 non-fiction books American autobiographies African-American autobiographies Autobiographies adapted into films African-American culture Autobiographies Books about health care Ben Carson