In the autumn of 2000, Hope Edelman was a woman adrift, questioning her place in her marriage, her profession, and the larger world. She felt isolated from her husband who’d been working 16-hour days, effectively leaving her, a busy working mother, alone to parent her three year old daughter Maya. Disconnected and vulnerable, she was primed for change. Into her stagnant routine dropped Dodo, Maya’s curiously disruptive imaginary friend. Dodo is ever-present and becoming more aggressive by the day, forcing Edelman to confront the possibility that something is going seriously awry with her child. After consulting mainstream health professionals for help and getting nowhere, Edelman and her husband made the unlikely choice to bring their daughter to Mayan healers in Belize, hoping that they might help banish Dodo—and, as they came to understand, all he represented—from their lives.

Examining how an otherwise mainstream mother and wife finds herself making this unorthodox choice, The Possibility of Everything chronicles the magical week in Central America that transformed Edelman from a person whose past had led her to believe only in the visible and the “proven” to some one open to the idea of larger, unseen forces. A deeply affecting and beautifully written memoir of a family’s emotional journey, it explores what Edelman and her husband went looking for in the jungle and what they ultimately discovered—as parents, as spouses, and as ordinary people—about the things that possess and destroy, or that can heal us all.

Ladan Osman is originally from Somali. She earned her BA in Creative Writing from Otterbein College in Ohio and is currently an MFA (Poetry) fellow with the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Funhouse, Kate, Quiz & Quill, and Poet Lore.

Cara Zimmer grew up in Pittsburgh and earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia. Before making her way to Austin, she spent two years living in southern Spain, where she fell in love with olives, Sevillanos, and drinking beer in crowded alleyways. She graduated from UT's MA program in Creative Writing in May, and she continues to write, teach, and seek more gainful employment.