The Last Language

Angela’s life is a disaster. After being widowed, thrown of Harvard, where she is a gifted linguist, and forced to move with her young daughter into her mother’s home, Angela now sits in jail on charges of sexual assault. She is writing a letter that she is forbidden to send, to the man she is on trial for abusing. Twenty-nine-year-old Sam, nonspeaking and with mobility challenges, was the subject of Angela’s questionable research project involving facilitated-communication technology that required hand-on-hand physical contact between researcher and subject. At first, Sam’s mother, Sandi, who has kept him at home his whole life, sees Angela as a miracle worker. Angela seems to unlock Sam’s brilliant mind and literary aspirations. Then Angela crosses the line and initiates an intimate relationship with Sam, the discovery of which by his mother and sister triggers the freefall collapse of Angela’s life and accelerates her increasingly erratic behavior of love, obsession, and manipulation.