MGH Institute Student Pens Children’s Book on Marathon Bombing

Jessica Kensky, her husband, Patrick Downes, and their service dog, Rescue, at the MGH Institute's 2016 Gala.

It was at a low point during Jessica Kensky’s three-year stretch of multiple surgeries that the concept of writing a book dealing with losing both her legs at the 2013 Boston Marathon first formed.

A friend who was a literary agent suggested Kensky and her husband, Patrick Downes, tell their story by focusing on Rescue, the black Labrador service dog that had become her constant companion and has helped put the couple’s life back together in the five years since the bombing. The idea came as she struggled to get through the dark days of constant pain and an uncertain future.

“I was so depressed,” recalls Kensky, a Doctor of Nursing Practice student at MGH Institute of Health Professions who is a nurse on the Lunder 10 oncology floor at Massachusetts General Hospital. “Just basic things like calling my mom back or doing insurance paperwork, I couldn’t do.”

Their children’s book, Rescue & Jessica: A Life-Changing Friendship, was released earlier in April to wide-spread acclaim. The thinly veiled fictionalized account of her ordeal was altered so the main character is now a young girl and Downes becomes her younger brother, with the introduction of a rescue dog being the story’s heart and soul.

Writing the book gave them a way to process just how important it was when Rescue, the real-life black Labrador, arrived to provide crucial emotional comfort as they dealt with their new reality.

It also allowed the couple to use their health care backgrounds – Downes, who lost one leg in the bombing, is a clinical psychologist who works with kids who have experienced trauma – to find a positive way to write about the tragedy as well interact with children who often would ask them unfiltered questions and openly stare at them in public. “When kids saw me in a wheelchair with no feet, a dog with a cape, and a guy with a metal leg, they would almost run into walls,” she says.

Over the next few months, the couple will be doing book signings to promote the book, which is published by Somerville-based Candlewick Press.