In the Shadow of Polio: A Personal and Social History »

Kathryn Black is the winner of the Colorado Book Award for best literary nonfiction for In the Shadow of Polio. A journalist whose work has appeared in many national magazines, she lives in Boulder, Colorado, with her husband and two sons.

"In 1954 Kathryn Black’s mother became one of the millions of people worldwide stricken with polio. A year later, as the Salk vaccine became widely available, the nation heaved a collective sigh of rel"

Publishers Weekly

In 1954, when journalist Black was a four-year-old living in Phoenix, her mother, Virginia, was diagnosed with bulbospinal polio and became completely paralyzed within two days. In gripping prose, Black poignantly traces the two-year course of Virginia's illness, which ended with her death at 30. After being encased in an iron lung for months, she adapted to a rocking bed and respirator and was sent home to Boulder, Colo., to be cared for by her own mother and by her husband, Del, who coped by drinking heavily and absenting himself from his family. Black intersperses research about the polio epidemic that swept the U.S. from 1942 to 1953 throughout her memoir. She vividly describes the desperate search for the cause of the disease and for ways to treat it, as well as provides accounts of families devastated by it. After Virginia's death, Black's father left (they have only recently resumed contact), and she and her brother were raised by her grandparents, who never discussed Virginia or her illness. Photos. (May)