Having never known what it is not to see, how can I imagine what it is to dream without the pictures that seem to flood my mind at night? Yet Helen Keller certainly dreams, and when she tells me what her dreaming experience is like, it opens my mind to think about sight and experience in new ways. It's the same with her tactile experience of things - I may see it and quickly pass by, but in "seeing" she knows it so much more intimately because her mental picture is formed by touching it all around until she can piece together the parts into a whole. And yet, in this life she can never grasp the aspects of that same object which are only visual.

I have always know that Ms. Keller was an articulate and talented woman. This is the first I have read of her writing. While she does not specifically focus on the spiritual, her Christian faith shines through in how she sees the world she lives in and in her hope for the next. Christians believe in the resurrection - and so I believe that one day Helen Keller will have a new physical body with perfect sight and hearing.

I am so thankful that Helen had the opportunity to learn, and to write, and by writing to open our eyes and minds to life without sight or hearing. It helps me to understand how it is that we can understand the things of heaven while hear on earth, and how marvelous it will be to one day open our eyes and "see" what till then we have only been able to picture dimly. As St. Paul said, "For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known." I Corinthians 13:12

Laura Caldwell does an excellent job of reading this book for Librivox. Her diction is clear and her reading steady, with enough variety to maintain interest while leaving the words themselves to provide emotional content to these wonderful essays.