Linda Morrow

“The unforgettable story of a mother’s love, an educator’s devotion, a family’s dedication, and a boy, Steve, who brightened many lives. Linda Morrow’s memoir chronicles her pioneering struggles to help Steve find his place in the world both as a child and as an adult. In doing so she also found the courage to become her best self. Hope, humor, heart—and heartbreak—fill these pages. Morrow’s strength of purpose will inspire anyone who has ever been told to be satisfied with the status quo. This is a remarkable book.” 

—Laura Kalpakian, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship recipient and award- winning author of The Great Pretenders

“Here is an invitation to share in the intersection between the realities of life and the expectations we create for ourselves and those that are created for us by our family and our friends and our communities. Linda and her son Steve not only lived in and through a period of cultural change and transformation about how, as a culture, we engage, include, and embrace the specially–abled among us, they helped bring about the transformation. This is a memoir across the span of a lifetime that speaks with the honesty, informality, and sometimes raw emotion of a voice with lived experience about how families and family members come together and sometimes come apart with the awakening of personal insight and power and shared responsibilities. This is not about lost opportunities and sacrifice. It is about the transformative spirit that energizes those we love and that love us. It is one family’s story about a mother’s love and a son who lived an amazing life.”

—Bob Bick, CEO The Howard Center, Burlington, VT

“A deeply moving, searingly honest blueprint of a woman’s full coming of age. There is such extraordinary self-reckoning in these pages about what it means to be an independent woman and a loving, committed mother. This honest, achingly wise book traces the fierce love that connects a mother and her son.”

—Susan Conley, Author of The Foremost Good Fortune, an Oprah Magazine Top Ten Pick and winner of the Maine Literary Award for Memoir.

“A true story of love, resilience, and struggle. The amazing journey of a loving mother who set out with no map, no examples, and little support determined to settle for nothing less than a full life for her son. Many times she had to “take the road less traveled” in her own life as well as Steve’s.”

—William E. Boyle, Jr. MD, Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics Dartmouth Medical School

“Linda Morrow’s story moved me deeply, both because of what she and her family accomplished for Steve, a captivating person with Down syndrome, and because I lived through those early years of Steve’s life as a special educator before there was a Federal law addressing the rights of children with handicaps. I remember the frustrations, the barriers and the tears shed both by parents and providers. The story unfolds into three intertwined narratives: Steve’s development into a man who was loved and admired in his chosen home of Burlington, Vermont; Linda’s own story of uncovering her voice and herself in ways she had not imagined; and the cultural shifts and huge challenges to public education that resulted from the passage of the Federal law 94-142, Education for All Handicapped Children Act. This is a warm-hearted, well-designed memoir with a depth of insight that makes it well worth reading.”

—Lyn Parker Hass PhD, Retired Special Educator

“This is a rare tale well told of a woman determined to both mother her son well and to live her own life and love honestly – as honestly as he did.”

—Leah Lax, Author of Uncovered – How I Left Hasidic Life and Finally Came Home