Anyone who feels that literacy has changed their life should read this book. The author tells of her heart-wrenching, lonely existence as an abused child who was shuttled from one foster home to another until she was adopted by a woman who opened her eyes to the world of reading. The author was able to overcome her less than auspicious beginning to become a professor of English at IUPUI. This story could have been told with much melodrama, but the author tells it in an extremely honest manner and lets the drama of the story come through naturally. She does not beg for sympathy for the circumstances of her childhood. She simply tells the readers how literacy brought her out of a miserable existence and makes a connection with her readers that will, at least for this reader, last forever.