Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story

Benjamin Solomon Carson, Sr. (b. September 18, 1951) is the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, as well as a 2016 presidential candidate, retired neurosurgeon, motivational speaker, and author of inspirational books. He earned a B.A. from Yale University and an M.D. from University of Michigan School of Medicine.

In his memoir, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (1990), Carson and coauthor Cecil Murphey explore how Carson’s gifts from God, his mother and older brother’s influence, and his belief in God and himself allowed him to escape the Detroit ghetto and become a prominent neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins, pioneering new techniques and performing life-saving brain surgery. Following a letter to readers from his mother and an Introduction by his wife, Carson recalls the key stages in his development, from the time he was eight until the peak of his neurosurgery career and launch of his work as an inspirational and motivational speaker and writer.

Starting with the moment that he learns, at age eight, that his father has left the family, leaving Carson’s mother to raise two sons alone, Carson discusses the challenges his family faces in the next years. These include both financial struggles and his mother’s mental health issues. During this time, Carson has a religious experience at a Seventh-day Adventist Church service and determines both to be baptized and to become a doctor.

Carson then turns to his personal struggles in elementary and secondary school, dealing with prejudice, striving for academic success, and seeking control of an unruly temper. Having achieved excellent grades and honed his leadership skills in the ROTC program, Carson enters Yale as a freshman in the premed program and faces continued challenges, including ongoing struggles for financial security and unexpected academic challenges. In his college years, he meets his future wife, Lacena (Candy) Rustin, with whom he shares a love of music and, eventually, commitment to the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Carson next focuses on his medical career. He tells how he returns to Michigan for medical school, marries Candy, and then heads to Johns Hopkins for his neurosurgery residency, spending a subsequent year in Western Australia, where his first son is born. He returns to John Hopkins, becoming their youngest ever director of pediatric neurosurgery, in which position he continues beyond the period covered in the book. Turning his attention to his career as director of pediatric neurosurgery, Carson details key surgical advances that he made, using his “gifted hands” while relying on God’s guidance, culminating with the separation of two craniopagus Siamese twins, the first such twins joined at the back of the cranium to both survive a separation.

He wraps up his memoir with a return to a focus on family life and his decision to limit his professional life in order to be present for his three sons, as his father was not present in his life. He reveals his and Candy’s plans to inspire economically challenged young people with a scholarship program and his THINK BIG approach to achieving success.