Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story or simply Gifted Hands is an autobiographical book about the success story of Dr. Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon and future politician, and his life going from a failing student to leading a team of surgeons in the first known separation of conjoined twins joined at the back of the head.

[1] Co-written by Ben Carson and Cecil Murphey,[2] Gifted Hands was adapted into a film of the same name by director Thomas Carter in 2009.

It is written in the first-person and describes how Ben, an African-American boy from the Detroit ghettos achieves success and fame as a world-class pediatric neurosurgeon.

In his college years, Ben meets his future wife, Lacena (Candy) Rustin, with whom he shares a love of music and, eventually, commitment to the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Turning his attention to his career as director of pediatric neurosurgery, Carson thinks back on key surgical advances that he made, using his “gifted hands” while relying on God’s guidance, most notably, the separation of two craniopagus German twins, the first such twins joined at the back of the cranium to both survive a separation.