In the Shadow of Polio

[This book] "offers a penetrating look at this tragic and intense period in American life [1950s]. The author began her inquiry as a deliberate search for information about her mother, who was never spoken of after she died. The book is Black's effort to create not only a history for herself, but to give voice and face to all who played their parts, however unwillingly, in this...drama. She alternates chapters that explore the lethal progression of her mother's illness [polio] and its devastating emotional impact upon her family with chapters that broaden into the social and historical context of this nation in the 1940s and 1950s...."