Polio Boulevard: A Memoir (Excelsior Editions)

In 1954, Karen Chase was a ten-year-old girl playing Monopoly in the polio ward when the radio blared out the news that Dr. Jonas Salk had developed the polio vaccine. The discovery came too late for her, and Polio Boulevard is Chase's unique chronicle of her childhood while fighting polio. From her lively sickbed she experiences puppy love, applies to the Barbizon School of Modeling, and dreams of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a polio patient who became President of the United States. Chase, now an accomplished poet who survived her illness, tells a story that flows backward and forward in time from childhood to adulthood. Her imagination soars in this narrative of illness and recovery, a stunning blend of provocative reflection, humor, and pluck.