by Susan Sheehan

A brilliantly documented chronicle of young woman's long struggle with schizophrenia.'

-- Willard Gaylin, The New Republic

'Sylvia Frumkin,' highly intelligent young girl, became a schizophrenic in her late teens and spent most of the next seventeen years in anti out of mental institutions. Susan Sheehan, a talented reporter followed 'Sylvia' for almost a year talking with and observing her listening to her monologues, sitting in on consultations with doctors, even for a period sleeping in the bed next to her in a mental hospital.

'Susan Sheehan has committed an extraordinary act of journalism....She brings relentless intelligent attention to bear on a particular case, a journalistic practice that almost always results in new and disturbing insights into those mindless generalities and prejudice and certitudes we tend to carry around with us.' -- Meg Greenfield, front page Washington Post Book World

'Sheehan is tenacious, observant and unsentimental. The history of a single patient leads us into a maze of understaffed institutions, bureaucratic fumbling, trial-and-error treatment and familial incomprehension. Though Sheehan keeps herself invisible, her sympathy is palpable.'

-- Walter Clemons, Newsweek

By the author of Lift for Me Ain't Been No Crystal Stair