Warm Springs: Traces of a Childhood at FDR's Polio Haven

The author offers a beautifully-written memoir and historical record of a spunky pre-adolescent as she challenges the staff at the Warm Springs Polio Foundation in Georgia (and eventually is removed from it). At age 11, she enters the sanitarium just before the first Salk vaccine, and her relationships with other patients and her caretakers take center stage. The author evokes the social climate of the 1950s juxtaposed with her own teenage rebellion and longing for acceptance and friendships. Her own memories as a patient--sometime hazy, often crisply clear--underpin her desire to connect to FDR's courage as he led the country, despite their common debilitating handicap