This volume brings together two of Paul West's best books: his critically acclaimed "Words for a Deaf Daughter" (1970), a nonfiction account of West's deaf and brain-damaged daughter Mandy at age eight, and "Gala" (1976), a novel about a writer named Wight Deulius who brings his handicapped teenage daughter Michaela from England to America for a visit. While Words is an account of Mandy's diagnosis and treatment, Gala is "the scenario of a wish-fulfillment" (as West writes in the preface), a continuation of the father and daughter's joyful investigation of the richness of life and its...