A Fork in the Road is a story of chronic illness, fortitude, faith and our nation. it is the autobiography of a 53-year old man, Craig Brown, who has battled a rare auto-immune disease called Behcet's Syndrome since 1979. Doctors were able to delay the onset of blindness by a dozen years which allowed Brown to finish law school and graduate school, complete his substantive legal training and as he became blind, to become a District Court judge in North Carolina. The book also chronicles Brown's initial denial and ultimate adjustment to, blindness. The book also deals with the life-threatening aspect of Behcet's then broadens widely to discuss the many train wrecks of others that Brown heard as a District Court judge. These train wrecks include the death of your parents, loss of employment, and divorce, among other things. Ultimately, in its final chapters, the book discussed the impact of our growing national debt upon the country and the major fork in the road that it represents. The book concludes with voluntary suggestions for reducing the national debt and, ultimately, with a love story in its final chapter called Hope.
About the Author: Judge Craig B. Brown is a native of Iowa City, Iowa, who came to the Triangle area as an out-of-state freshman at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1975. After a memorable childhood visit there, Craig Brown fell in love with Chapel Hill and Durham all over again. He received his B.A. in Political Science from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1979, and his law degree from UNC in 1983, as well as his Master's Degree in Public Policy from Duke University the same year. Judge Brown practiced law with the Durham law firm of Spears, Barnes, Baker and Hoof, and its successor, Spears, Barnes, Baker, Wainio, Brown and Whaley, from 1983 until 1996. After he won the North Carolina Lawyer of the Year Award in 1995 for helping to establish TROSA, a long-term drug treatment program, then-governor James B. Hunt, Jr., appointed him to the District Court Bench on September 30th, 1996. He served on that Bench in Durham from that time until May 2, 2008, when he retired from the Bench for medical reasons. His first book, Blind Justice, is his legal autobiography. He has two daughters and lives in Durham