THE BITTERSWEET TRIUMPH

The author is a cerebral palsy victim and this is her raw and honest account of an acutely vulnerable life. Heymanns always yearned to be accepted by the ""popular crowd,"" but ""Who wanted to be with someone whose garbled speech was difficult to understand, who looked like a drunk?"" She remembers her childhood struggle to cope with school and making friends, her later efforts to master the rudiments of her chosen profession, photography. Thanks in part to loving parents, she overcame what to her were enormous obstacles: how to carry heavy equipment, how to travel alone, most of all how to communicate with others. As an adult she at last faces her handicap square on--after plateaus of success and repeated failures, physical and mental illness, and a disturbing relationship with another cerebral palsy victim. Heymanns' account spares neither herself nor the reader as she remembers, for instance, her first experience of hearing her voice on tape: ""I heard a strange garbled monotonous voice. . . slow, hard to understand, distorted. . . [it] went on and on. I couldn't bear to listen."" Though she is not a schooled writer, her story is immensely moving.