A gripping story of one family's experience with liver disease and transplant surgery. Young David Yomtoob had, at 13 years of age, everything to live for--doing well at school, playing soccer, and thrilling at the exploits of the Pittsburgh Steelers--when, suddenly, he began to waste away, the victim of a rare, crippling liver disease: Wilson's Disease, a birth defect that prevents the body from properly eliminating copper. The Gift of Love becomes, then, a second-by-second suspense tale, detailing the diagnostic methods, the family's and David's state of mind, the agonizing wait for a compatible liver, the crucial find of one only hours before David would surely have expired, the transplant operation (normally, a 12-hour ordeal, but in David's case shortened considerably by the surgeon's speed in the face of David's acute condition), and the long recuperation period leading up to a moving bar mitzvah ceremony before 550 family and friends and many television cameras. Childhood liver disease has recently garnered much media attention, partly through the intercession of President Reagan, who pleaded recently for a donor for a threatened child. Yomtoob tells her family's story, alternating between her own emotional state at each stage of the family's trial and a dry account of medical techniques, foibles, and triumphs. A moving tale.