The Story of a Heart

A beautiful, unforgettable story of how a little boy's life was saved by a heart transplant - and the sacrifice that required it

The first of our organs to form, the last to die, the heart is both a simple pump and the symbol of all that makes us human: as long as it continues to beat, we hope. The Story of a Heart is the narrative of the staggering medical innovations that have given us heart transplants, interwoven with the story of two children - one of whom desperately waits for a heart to safe his life.

Setting out for a family day out in Devon, nine-year-old Keira Bell suffered catastrophic brain injuries in a car accident. Against all the odds her heart continued to beat. Halfway across the country, the hospital in which Max Johnson lay with end-stage heart failure, received the call his family had been hoping for. In an act of extraordinary generosity Keira's parents and siblings immediately and unanimously agreed that she would have wanted her organs donated.

Rachel Clarke relates the emotional and urgent journey of Keira's heart and meticulously unpicks the history of the remarkable surgery that made it possible: a testament to medical innovation that stretches back over a century, involving the knowledge and dedication not just of headline-grabbing surgeons but of countless nurses and technicians, immunologists and physicians, of paramedics and the motorists who give way to their blue lights.

Perhaps most of all, The Story of a Heart speaks of the compassion that shows itself in the protocols of respect to the dying, and in the ways we honour our loved ones: it is a story of the tenacity of love.