Laura Hillenbrand was born in 1967 in Fairfax, Virginia. Her parents separated when she was a child, leaving her mother, a psychologist, to raise four children. A bright and athletic young woman, Hillenbrand was attending Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, getting good grades and planning to spend her junior year at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, when she became suddenly and inexplicably ill. Thinking it was merely a case of food poisoning, she ignored the symptoms and waited for the illness to go away. Instead, the illness worsened, and other symptoms arose. These eventually became so debilitating that Hillenbrand was bedridden; ultimately, she dropped out of school and returned to her family in Fairfax.

She visited many doctors, who variously diagnosed her as suffering from the Epstein-Barr virus, bulimia, and nothing at all. Finally, at Johns Hopkins, Hillenbrand was told she was suffering from Chronic Fatigue...