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Summary
Summary
A captivating novel that explores the little-known romance of a beloved American icon
Helen Keller has long been a towering figure in the pantheon of world heroines. Yet the enduring portrait of her in the popular imagination is The Miracle Worker , which ends when Helen is seven years old.
Rosie Sultan's debut novel imagines a part of Keller's life she rarely spoke of or wrote about: the man she once loved. When Helen is in her thirties and Annie Sullivan is diagnosed with tuberculosis, a young man steps in as a private secretary. Peter Fagan opens a new world to Helen, and their sensual interactions--signing and lip-reading with hands and fingers--quickly set in motion a liberating, passionate, and clandestine affair. It's not long before Helen's secret is discovered and met with stern disapproval from her family and Annie. As pressure mounts, the lovers plot to elope, and Helen is caught between the expectations of the people who love her and her most intimate desires.
Richly textured and deeply sympathetic, Sultan's highly inventive telling of a story Keller herself would not tell is both a captivating romance and a rare glimpse into the mind and heart of an inspirational figure.
Author Notes
Rosie Sultan earned her MFA at Goddard College and won a PEN Discovery Award for fiction. A former fellow at the Virginia Center for the Arts, she has taught writing at Boston University, the University of Massachusetts, and Suffolk University. She lives with her husband and son in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Reviews (2)
Booklist Review
If Abe Lincoln can hunt vampires, then why not cast Helen Keller as a sexy seductress? And best of all, Sultan's debut novel at least bears a grain of truth. Going well beyond Keller's Miracle Worker days, Sultan examines a little-known period that finds Helen and loyal companion Annie Sullivan barnstorming the country on a lecture series. When Sullivan falls ill, in steps Peter Fagan as Keller's private secretary. Fagan, a brash young journalist, shares Helen's antiwar sentiments and passion for socialism, and their intellectual bond soon turns physical. The affair meets with disapproval from both Sullivan and Helen's mother, who make no secret of their intentions to break up the lovers. That they succeed will come as no surprise to readers; we know Helen doesn't marry Peter. Though this steals some of the suspense from Sultan's story, in truth the romance feels secondary to the author's examination of Helen's inner life and her feelings of utter dependence and loneliness. Sultan convincingly imagines that this much-admired, if oversimplified, icon wanted nothing more than to be treated like a woman.--Wetli, Patty Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Most of us think of Helen Keller either as the wild blind-deaf child depicted in the film The Miracle Worker (which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year) or as an international role model in her adult years. In this eye-opening and thoroughly involving debut novel, Sultan (winner of a PEN Discovery Award for fiction) takes a little-known episode in Keller's long life-her affair with and brief engagement to a 29-year-old newspaper reporter, Peter Fagan, in the fall of 1916-and imagines what their romance was like. (Actual letters from the affair were burned.) In the process, Keller as a woman in her thirties yearning for love comes alive for the reader. Still, as interesting as her ill-fated romance is, it is Keller's life of activism coupled with her dependence on others for basic things like having her letters read to her that will move readers and make them eager to learn more about her life. VERDICT This well-written novel will appeal to those who enjoy women's fiction as well as readers of historical and biographical fiction. A thoroughly enjoyable read that should entice many to seek out one of the biographies Sultan recommends in an afterword.-Elizabeth Mellett, Brookline P.L., MA (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
