My blog post about this book is at this link. ( )

This is one of the most thought-provoking books about polio that I have read, and I read a pile of polio books a few years ago while researching a book I was writing. But Shreve's book cuts to the heart of how children afflicted with the dread disease were often isolated from their families, and hospitalized for months and sometimes years, undergoing operation after operation, "stabilizing" joints and "transplanting" muscles. Shreve herself endured some of these surgeries, taking for granted that they would help, although the truth is most of these surgeries were experimental in nature and probably were not all that useful. Shreve does not dwell on that part of her time at FDR's "polio haven" though, choosing instead to remember how she coped, between the ages of eleven and thirteen, with being on her own and wrestling with feelings of sexual awakening and homesickness. She chose to be optimistic and useful for the most part, but she also was something of a rebel, gaining a reputation as someone who stirred things up on the sprawling hospital campus. It was during the endless hours of waiting, treatment and healing that she first discovered the pleasure of her own imagination and decided to be a writer. She also considered larger questions - flirting for a time with conversion to Catholicism, partly perhaps she had a crush on the priest who was the chaplain at Warm Springs. Shreve somehow survived her long internment at Warm Springs, and perhaps it even made her a stronger person, although this is a question she still wrestles with, as she continues to speculate on her relationship with her long-gone parents. I stayed up late last night to finish this book. There is much to be learned from Shreve's account of her time at Warm Springs, and not just about polio. For this is a book about growing up, and about finding your place in an often confusing society. Shreve is now a very respected writer and teacher, the author of dozens of books for both adults and children. I admire her tremendously for all these accomplishments, but particularly for finally writing this book. ( )

The ending was a lot better than the poorly-written, repetitive beginning. It seemed like she worked through the trauma of injuring her best friend as she wrote the book, and gained some distance from it. Overall, though I was disappointed. ( )