Beyond the Miracle Worker

Synopsis

The first biography to unearth the fascinating relationship between Anne Sullivan Macy and Helen Keller After many years, historian and Helen Keller expert Kim Nielsen realized that she, along with other biographers, had shortchanged Anne Sullivan Macy, a woman remembered primarily as a miracle worker. The story of this brilliant, complex, and misunderstood woman who described herself as a "badly constructed human being," has never been completely told. Nielsen's biography, the first to focus on Macy in nearly fifty years, complicates the typical Helen-Annie "feel-good" narrative in surprising ways. By telling Macy's life as her story—not Keller's—it presents a new, gripping tale about a wounded but determined woman and her quest for a successful and meaningful life. Born in 1866 to poor Irish immigrants, the deserted Macy suffered part of her childhood in the Massachusetts State Almshouse in Tewksbury before studying at the Perkins School for the Blind. As an adult, Macy taught Keller, helping her realize her immense potential. Nielsen argues that Macy's intimate friendship with Keller remained powerful yet later reversed as Macy —floundering with her own blindness, depression, and tumultuous marriage—eventually leaned on her student emotionally, physically, and economically.Beyond the Miracle Workerunravels one of the best known—and least understood—friendships of the twentieth century.