Product Description

Meet Laura Van Ryn and Whitney Cerak: one buried under the wrong name, one in a coma and being cared for by the wrong family.

This shocking case of mistaken identity stunned the country and made national news. Would it destroy a family? Shatter their faith? Push two families into bitterness, resentment, and guilt?

Read this unprecedented story of two traumatized families who describe their ordeal and explore the bond sustaining and uniting them as they deal with their bizarre reversal of life lost and life found.

And join Whitney Cerak, the sole surviving student, as she comes to terms with her new identity, forever altered, yet on the brink of new beginnings.

Mistaken Identity weaves a complex tale of honesty, vulnerability, loss, hope, faith, and love in the face of one of the strangest twists of circumstances imaginable.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #103569 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781416567356
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
In a widely reported incident in 2006, Laura Van Ryn and Whitney Cerak, students at an evangelical college in Indiana, and their families were victims of a ghastly mistake: the wrong girl was identified as the survivor of a car crash that claimed multiple lives. Only after five weeks, when the girl emerged from a coma, was the error discovered. The families and the survivor, Whitney, record their experiences in this heavily Christian account. Those seeking a tale of extraordinary emotions to match the extraordinary circumstances will be disappointed: both families are devoutly religious, and their faith is of the sort that does not admit a great range of feelings. Anger and anguish are quickly recast as professions of faith and celebrations of life in Christ. The Van Ryns immediately embrace Whitney and dismiss a reporter's suggestion of lawsuits. Nor are the Ceraks bitter, not even Whitney, who suffers brain damage. As they describe it, the story inspires others to adopt their beliefs. (Because of such conversions, Whitney writes that the five people killed in the crash have given their lives for Christ.) Readers who don't share the authors' faith may feel alienated, however much they admire the fortitude of the families.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author
The Van Ryn family -- Don, Susie, Lisa, Kenny, and Mark -- of Grand Rapids, Michigan shares an avid interest in outdoor recreation. Don and Susie, married for thirty years, are leaving their chosen professions to dedicate themselves full time to an outdoor camping experience for youth in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

Lisa is pursuing a career in physical therapy, and Kenny lives and works in Southern California. Mark is recently married and resides in the Detroit area.

Despite the sorrow surrounding the passing of their daughter Laura,the family continues to be involved in the work of their local church and community.

The Cerak family -- Newell, Colleen, Carly, Whitney and Sandra Sepulveda -- lives in northern Michigan, where Newell is a youth pastor and Colleen is a PE teacher and coach.

Carly graduated from Taylor University and has lived in Africa for the last six months starting a new ministry to street kids.

Sandra took a year from Grand Valley State University and joined with Invisible Children to bring awareness of the plight of children in Uganda. She is currently back at GVSU finishing her nursing degree.

Whitney is now a junior at Taylor University majoring in psychology. She is confident in God's healing and the revelation of the Holy Spirit in her life.

Mark Tabb has authored and co-authored over twenty books, including Living with Less, the Upside of Downsizing Your Life (B&H), and the 2004 Gold Medallion finalist, Out of the Whirlwind (B&H). He also collaborated with Stephen Baldwin on the New York Times bestseller, The Unusual Suspect (FaithWords). Mark is currently working with Alec Baldwin on his book, A Promise to Ourselves (St. Martin's Press).

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Colleen Cerak woke up with a start to the sound of the phone ringing. Her eyes could barely focus as she tried to make out the alarm clock on the nightstand. It was nearly two in the morning, Wednesday, May 31. When she finally reached the phone, she thought she recognized the voice on the other end as a man identified himself as the Grant County coroner. The same man had called five weeks earlier, telling her that Whitney, her eighteen-year-old daughter, had died in an accident along with three other Taylor University students and a university employee. That call also came late at night. Why would the coroner call me in the middle of the night now? she wondered.

"The county chaplain is monitoring this call," the coroner told her. Then he asked what struck Colleen as a very strange question. "Are you alone?"

"What? Yes. I mean no," she said. "Carly, my daughter, is home with me."

"Would you please ask her to listen in on this conversation?"

If she hadn't been so asleep, Colleen might have asked why it mattered if she were alone, and why the coroner had called at such an ungodly hour. But she didn't. Her body was awake, but her mind hadn't caught up with it yet. She climbed out of bed, walked across the hall to Carly's room, and woke her up. "I need you to listen in on this call. I'm going downstairs to get the other phone. Don't hang up," Colleen said.

Carly was sound asleep when her mother threw the cordless phone on her bed. "What? You want me to do what? Why?" Carly asked, but Colleen had already started down the stairs. Half asleep, but already panicking, Carly put the phone to her ear. She listened as her mother asked the man to identify himself again. The moment she heard him say he was the coroner, Carly felt sick to her stomach.

"We now know," the coroner said, "that the accident survivor in the hospital identified as Laura Van Ryn is not in fact Laura. This fact was confirmed earlier this evening through her dental records."

Carly listened upstairs while Colleen was downstairs on the main extension. Neither of them said a word, their minds unable to comprehend what they were hearing. Then the coroner dropped his bombshell. "We have reason to believe your daughter may be alive."

"No. No. That's impossible. We buried her," Colleen said. In her half-awake state, she thought the coroner was saying that Whitney had been alive when she was placed in her casket, meaning the family had buried her alive. The thought horrified her. The coroner quickly clarified what he meant. "We have reason to believe that the girl identified as Laura Van Ryn is, in fact, your daughter Whitney Cerak."

The moment Carly heard the coroner say that Laura was Whitney, she threw down the phone and stormed down the stairs. "No, no, no!" she screamed. "Hang up the phone, Mom. hang up! I can't believe someone would be so cruel as to pull a prank like this. This is the worst thing I've ever heard of in my life!"

"What did you say?" Colleen said to the coroner. She could hardly hear his response.

"Mom, listen to me!" Carly yelled. "There's no way that isn't Laura. Her family and her boyfriend have been right at her side for five weeks. Five weeks! Don't you think they would have noticed if it weren't Laura? A lot of my friends have seen her. Kelly was there! Mom, don't you think my own roommate would have noticed something as obvious as this!? Whitney doesn't look like Laura. Why would someone do this?" She began crying. "Mom, hang up the phone. Hang up, HANG UP!"

Finally Colleen asked the coroner, "May I call you back? I really need some time to think."

The coroner seemed taken aback by her question. "Mrs. Cerak, this is a very serious matter. We need you to bring your daughter's dental records to the hospital in Grand Rapids as quickly as possible so that we can make a positive identification."

"I understand that. What's your number there?"

"Mrs. Cerak!"

"May I please have your number?" Colleen's mind could not process what he was telling her; she was in shock. Maybe Carly is right. Maybe this is nothing but a cruel, cruel hoax. Once Colleen had the phone number, she hung up the phone and sank into her chair. Carly sat across from her on the sofa, fuming.

"Who could be so cruel?" Carly asked. Colleen didn't respond. She checked the phone number and discovered that the call had, in fact, come from Marion General Hospital in Indiana, the hospital to which Whitney's body had been taken on the night she died.

"That doesn't mean the call was real," Carly protested. She looked over at her mother. "Mom, you don't actually believe this garbage, do you?" She threw up her hands in frustration. In her mind, Carly believed she had to be the voice of reason in the family. Her father, a youth pastor, was in New York with a group of high school seniors for their annual graduation trip. With him gone, she kicked into full big-sister mode. "Mom, believe me. I know that the girl in the hospital is Laura, not Whitney. I know what I'm talking about. Who are you going to believe, your own daughter or some stranger making prank calls in the middle of the night!?"

Colleen didn't know what to do next. She hesitated to call and awaken her husband, Newell, when she didn't yet have any firm information. Going on this trip had been a hard enough decision for him. It was his first step toward something approaching normalcy in his job since they'd lost Whitney five weeks earlier. If this was in fact a hoax, Colleen saw no reason to make him suffer through it as well. Unsure of where else to turn, she called Newell's best friend and coworker, Pastor Jim Mathis, who had walked with the family through the tragedy of Whitney's death. "Jim, we have a situation here," she said, "and I don't know where else to turn. We just received a phone call..."

"A fake phone call!" Carly shouted in the background.

"We just received a phone call from someone claiming to be the Grant County coroner. He said..." -- Colleen could hardly believe the words were coming out of her mouth -- "he said that Whitney may be alive."

"What?" Jim said. "How?"

"I don't know. I don't even know if the call was real. Would you check it out for me? I don't think I can."

"Sure. What's the number?"

Five minutes later he called back and said, "It looks like we need to go on another road trip."

As soon as she hung up the phone, Colleen called the family dentist for Whitney's dental records, which he said he would bring over right away. Only then did she call her husband. The moment Colleen said his name, Newell knew something was wrong. "Not Carly," he said. "Please tell me that it's not Carly." With Whitney gone, he couldn't bear the thought of something happening to their only surviving daughter.

"No, no, no. Carly's fine. It's uh...it's about Whitney."

"What?"

"I just got a call from the Grant County coroner's office, and they think...they think Whitney may be alive."

"That's impossible," he said. "We buried her. She can't be alive."

"Let me talk to him," Carly yelled in the background and then grabbed the phone out of her mother's hand. "Don't believe any of this, Dad. The phone call said they think Laura is Whitney, but she can't be. My friends saw her. They know Whitney. Believe me, Dad, this is impossible!"

"I know, Carly. I know" was all he could say in response.

Colleen got back on the line. "Jim is going to drive us down to Grand Rapids so we can hand over Whitney's dental records to the hospital. I'm sure it's nothing but a wild-goose chase, but we have to go."

"Be sure to call me as soon as you get there," Newell said. Then he hung up the phone and tried to sleep, to no avail. His mind spun out of control as he lay in the dark. He replayed all that had happened since Colleen had first called him on April 26, 2006, and told him that Whitney had been in an accident. He had been away on a ministry-related trip that night as well. Since then he'd carried a hole in his soul that could not be filled. Yet it wasn't a grief without hope. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Whitney was in the very presence of God in heaven. Yet now the family was told she was not in heaven, but alive in a hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan. "Unbelievable," he repeated over and over.

As he tossed and turned in his bed, one thought raced through his mind: How can this even be possible? If a mistake had been made, someone would have noticed in the first couple of days. But five weeks? Five weeks?! Impossible. How could the Van Ryns not have realized this girl wasn't their daughter? She must be horribly disfigured, since it wasn't just the immediate family who would have to be mistaken. Her boyfriend and all of Laura's closest friends had also visited her in the hospital, and not one of them had alerted authorities that there might be a mistake. How could no one have noticed they had misidentified the person in that bed?

Neither he nor Colleen had seen Whitney's body after the accident. It had made sense at the time, but now a wave of self-doubt washed over him. We didn't want the image of Whit lying in a casket burned in our minds, he reminded himself. Colleen and I agreed that we didn't want that to be the first thing we thought of when we thought about her. Not once had they questioned their decision. Now, for the first time, Newell wondered how the authorities had identified the bodies at the scene of the accident. That opened the door for the biggest question of all: Could Whitney really be alive?

While Newell tossed and turned in bed at a campground in New Jersey, the rest of the family got ready for what Carly later called "the worst car trip of my life." Colleen told her, "You should pack some clothes to take with us. If this really is Whitney, we'll probably stay down there for a while."

Carly shot her mother a look. "Would you be realistic, Mother? I told you. My friends have been down there. They've seen her. They all know it's Laura. If it were Whitney, don't you think Laura's best friends would have noticed?"

"Carly, please, we just have to make su...

Customer Reviews

A Different Point of View
At the time I am writing this review, I see there are no reviews lower than a "5". For those of you who want a more objective view, or those who want a different point of view from a person who isn't an evangelical Christian, this one is for you.

Like many readers I was mesmerized by this story, first hearing of it when it happened and then more recently when it received more media attention on Dateline, Oprah, and via People magazine coinciding with the publication of the book. How could this have happened? How did the families react? How is Whitney doing? All these questions were answered by the media yet I wanted to know more and was glad to see the book was available for download on my Kindle. The Van Ryns and Ceraks seem like such nice people who are truly living their faith. Even in their grief how they were able to reach out to one another was really amazing. We should all learn from how they handled this tragic situation. That said, I wanted to know more about Whitney's brain injury itself and other than the first five weeks, the TBI portion was really not covered in very much detail.

These families are the epitome of Christian kindness. In a world where evangelical Christians sometimes have a negative connotation, where they say they pray but their actions seem to be full of hypocrisy, these people really do walk the walk and talk the talk. When I see those buttons that say "WWJD" these are the people who definitely I would think of.

However, although well written, the families use so much praise and prayer in their story that they end up alienating the readers who could really benefit from the message. Another sore spot with me was that they did a lot of bragging about the people that evidently became Christians due to this tragedy. Does that make them somehow feel better? The story itself really gets bogged down in all the religion. To some readers this is a positive point, to others like myself who considers themself spiritual rather than religious, this was way overdone. I found myself skimming many parts - making this a very quick read.

For those who are interested in a book detailing more about traumatic brain injury, I highly recommend Where is the Mango Princess by Cathy Crimmins who details her husband's TBI in detail and how it affected her family. I would recommend Mistaken Identity to evangelical Christians who aren't concerned about details of traumatic brain injury itself. I am glad that I didn't pay full price for this book, instead being able to download it on my Kindle. I can see where a person who could easily be put-off by the overtly Christian overtones of this book would send it flying across the room despite the fact that this is a truly amazing story and these are wonderful people who I applaud for being as caring as they were in a time of such tragedy. I think that it doesn't take a Christian to be able to react this way, genuine caring human beings of any faith or no faith at all may have done the same thing.

Just an aside, it will be really interesting to see how many "not helpful" votes I get for this review from people who just don't agree with me because I dared write a negative review on this book, because I dared be anti-Christian when I am truly just trying to be helpful and give people another version in order for them to make an educated decision before spending their hard-earned money on a book.

A Great Read
I couldn't put this book down. It was such a compelling read that I kept turning page after page wanting to know what came next...eventhough I already knew how it ended. It is beautifully written, almost like reading a fiction book, and yet, of course, frightenly real. It is tragic that this actually happened, but I'm thankful to each family that they have chosen to tell their story. To share with us the grace and mercy, and abundant love that these two families have for one another. They have been a wonderful example of how we, too, can love and forgive, and have compassion towards one another when life doesn't play out how we would like. This book makes me want to live a deeper faith-filled life and always love and have faith...no matter what!

Hollywood could never have dreamed this up!
If you can think what is the most outrageous unbelievable story you heard in your lifetime, it has to be this; the daughter you buried is not yours, and the injured daughter you nursed for five weeks was not yours. Although tragedies often evolve into miracles, this combination was never meant to be.

After a tragic accident on an Indiana highway, two blond girls of similar features were mistaken for one another. Whitney Cerak lived but was comatose, while Laura Van Ryn actually died, but was sent to the hospital to be treated. Misidentification! It was a result coroner's carelessness, and with that, unimaginable consequences upon two families.

The book, written with help of author Mark Tabb, starts with the section about the events of discovery, on the Cerak's part, that their daughter may be alive. Then, the story begins and reveals extensive detail of care by the Van Ryns who believed their daughter was alive, but was hurt badly. This is simple and non-pretentious writing, because it is merely your average God-loving families with deep religious faith.

Connecting with the readers
As you read, you begin to really understand the two families, their feelings, fears, surprises, stamina, hope, faith, etc. And if you are unfamiliar with their dedicated passages, you too, can learn and be inspired. Read Laura's sister Lisa's amazing faithful internet blog for updates and then you have Susie Van Ryn's touching prayer journal. Learn about the emotional passages said during the Cerak funeral.

Compassionate People
You will learn the true compassion of strangers, the offering of the Samaritan house to the Van Ryns; the couple who owned the pizza shop and brought so much pizza and bottled water to ICU. You will hear how the Van Ryns were surprised their neighbors cut the grass while the family was bedside to Laura. You will learn how the Ceraks through their grief received so many flowers, food, cookies, notes, cards and how they sat and listened intently to each of many phone messages offering comfort.

False Parents
I had to laugh at what Don Van Ryn said when he learned that his Laura referred to them as false parents. With that, you feel compassion for this family as they wrestled with the phrase "false parents."

And then, share in the exchange of discovery that changed their lives, and the miracle of the Ceraks that could only be dreadful tragedy for the Van Ryns.

This is a wonderful story that Hollywood could not have dreamed up! I have children, I feel for these amazing people, all of them..... Rizzo