National Network for Equitable Library Service

This is a book about a young Canadian girl, Mae Brown, who exhibited intelligence, stamina, commitment and courage under the exceptionally incapacitating condition of being both deaf and blind. Born in 1935, the third child of a bushworker on a homestead west of Thunder Bay, she walked the six miles to and from school as long as she was able to do so. She then received teaching at home from her devoted and determined mother through correspondence courses as her sight steadily decreased. She would lose her hearing later. Graduating from the University of Toronto in 1972, Mae was the first person who was deaf-blind to do so in Canada, and possibly the second woman in the world since Helen Keller. How this was accomplished over 13 years, 12 months a year, how she coped with periods of loneliness, love relationships and heartbreaks, and how she strove to prove she was just a normal girl who could not see and hear is a poignant, revealing and inspiring tale, unique in every way.