From an article in "The New Yorker" comes the true story of a young woman rescued from a childhood of epic abuse. Incarcerated by a deranged father, Genie spent her early years strapped in a chair in a closed back room of an all-too-quiet suburban house. When discovered, she was a teenager who had to begin her new life with the rudiments - how to walk, how to chew and how to talk with the scientists who were her new caretakers and companions. She entered a world of culture, affection and great ambition, for she fell head-first into a seething scientific debate over how the human brain acquires language. Even as Genie spoke her first words, her experience gave eloquent answers to that linguistic question, and to another much older mystery - what does it mean to be human? In this book, Russ Rymer relates new details, not revealed in "The New Yorker", of the discovery, emergence and eventual disappearance of a woman who changed American science, and the lives of the scientists as well.