What Happened to Henryis a funny, moving, wise, and powerful tale of a family's struggle to understand their own son-who is either crazy or blessed, not unlike the Cold War America in which they live. Nine-year-old Lauren Cooper is devoted to her brother, Henry. She looks to him for strength, wisdom, and the cool levelheadedness that, she is realizing, she lacks. But when a sudden tragedy upsets the balance of her close-knit family, Henry's steadfastness starts to crack, and Lauren is forced to watch out for her onetime protector as he grapples with a strange-although not altogether negative-affliction. As the Cooper children stumble into adulthood, Lauren continues to keep an eye on Henry, whose already loose ties to the world seem to be weakening. But Lauren is starting to suspect that there's another layer to her brother's "illness" that they're all overlooking. And if she can understand what's happening to him, she will unlock nothing less than the mysteries of the universe itself.