Without a Word: How a Boy's Unspoken Love Changed Everything »

Jill Kelly, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist. She is the author of The Golden Fairy and The Lost Star Children of Ur and was creator of the radio series, The Cycle of Darkness is Over. She is the founder and director of the Homestar School in Oakland, Michigan, where she currently resides.

Dr. Richard Gerber (1954-2007) received his medical degree from Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit. He is highly respected for his 25 years of progressive research into alternative methods of diagnosis and healing.

WITHOUT A WORD is a riveting memoir that blends remarkable achievement with passion, sacrifice, love, pain, and human interest. It takes the reader into the lives of a celebrity couple, Pro Football Hall of Famer Jim Kelly, and his wife, Jill, to reveal the Kelly family's private struggle and how eight and a half years with their severely disabled, terminally ill son, Hunter, unfolded in a redemptive and transforming manner. The light of Hunter's love through his brief and silent life shone into the shadowed corners of Jill and Jim's lives resulting in Jill believing that Jesus Christ was authentic, her learning to forgive Jim of past indiscretions, and finally resulting in Jim's seeking and finding God. Lessons gleaned from Hunter's life and death, and Jim and Jill's struggle to save their marriage during tumultuous times, make this a compelling and inspiring read.

Publishers Weekly

Kelly, wife of pro football Hall of Famer Jim Kelly and mom to Hunter, the child on whom her memoir is focused, shares her experience with a candid and genuine spirit. Jill entered the big leagues with Buffalo Bills quarterback Kelly as a naïve young 20-something woman who first became pregnant and then became Mrs. Kelly. The author quite transparently discusses how ill-equipped both she and Jim were for matrimony. When their second child, Hunter, was born with the neurodegenerative disorder Krabbe disease, life turned inside out for them as individuals and as a couple. The text chronicles Hunter's medical journey; his spirit of love overcame countless obstacles while affecting his family's lives, even long after he died. Kelly shares one very public family's journey through grievous suffering and shows how God healed their pain in his own time and way. (Sept.)