Critical Praise, Page 3

Brucie Jacobs takes you on a roller coaster ride through the range of emotions a family experiences when the parents choose to institutionalize their daughter who is mentally retarded and to keep that daughter’s existence a secret until her two sisters are teenagers. The irony is that only Brucie, who musters the courage to contact and then build a relationship with her sister Anne, realizes what the family missed by depriving themselves of the unique joy that was Anne...As one who knew Anne, I can appreciate the superb fashion in which Brucie Jacobs portrays the unique personality that was Anne’s and the ways in which Anne was more like her than not. Lucky for us at The Arc of Baltimore, we got to share the enthusiasm for personal contact and joy for living that literally gushed from Anne. Fortunately, so did Brucie. -- Steve Morgan, Executive Director, The Arc of Baltimore

I loved Secret Girl I think it’s an important story, heartbreakingly vivid, and beautifully told. I’m the mother of a teenager with mental retardation, so I’ve read a lot about the days when physicians routinely told families to put their less-than-perfect babies in institutions—to “forget” about them. What a tragic legacy. I hope Secret Girl reaches many readers.--Jane Bernstein, author of the memoir Loving Rachel, and professor of English and Creative Writing at Carnegie Mellon University.

Secret Girl is a compelling evocation of the dynamics of one family around an invisible sister tucked away into an institution, and the long journey of the author to claim her sister, and claim herself. This is a memorable book, with implications reaching far beyond the precisely rendered constellation of relationships that move between denial and the building of a true identity, between fear and enduring connection. The author's accurate eye and deep desire for truth make this book a necessary one to enter, a great visit to the birth of love between sisters, and to its persistence.--Anya Achtenberg, Zoetrope-award winning author and poet.

This book...is not simply the story of a child who had been placed in an institution...it is a story within a story of an interwoven set of family elements that create an interesting and intriguing complexity, and, how with time and determination, they can become resolved, even after so much suffering....In this book there is more than one family secret and the secrets weave in and out of the narrative keeping the reader interested, curious and reflective....Although this is a very personal account, it is a book about the sociology of a segment of American society in the second half of the 20th century, and although it is set so squarely in a specific time and place, its non-linear approach to time and place make it more interesting and real....disturbingly familiar and palpable." -- Leslie Rubin, M.D., Visiting Scholar, Department of Pediatrics, Morehouse School of Medicine; Medical Director, TEAM Centers and Developmental Pediatrics Specialists, Atlanta, GA