Description: An indelible portrait of the fallout of childhood illness, separation from a protective mother, and first love, Shreve chronicles her stay at the Warm Springs sanitarium during the height of the polio epidemic. Her memoir is both a fascinating historic record and an intensely felt story of childhood.

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Children's Literature Review: Shreve recounts memories of her childhood, part of which was spent at FDR's project, the Warm Springs Polio Foundation in Georgia, with piercing clarity. The story is engaging and moving as she opens to the reader a world of segregation when she remembers being told not to befriend a little black girl because she is black; a world of disability as she describes the determination of parents for children to be "normal" and their despair when those children cannot achieve normalcy; a world of adolescent rebellion as she weaves together pieces of the event that threatens the life of her friend and leads to her own early departure from the foundation. Shreve tells her story from the perspective of the adult she has become; in fact, she consciously compares the way she writes the story now with what she had written years ago as a teenager. Even so, she thoroughly immerses herself and her readers in the experience she had as a child, creating a compelling narrative that, despite the physical ...

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