Nobody's Child

Rating:
Summary: wonderful!!
Review: Dr. Katz and Mrs. Balter portrayed her account beautifully!! how very courageous!

Rating:
Summary: A book of hope!
Review: I love how Marie describes her struggles with mental illness and how she finds the strength within herself to overcome her problems. She does this without blaming or resenting the people in her life who mistreated her, like her parents and the people in the hospital. She gives hope for the hopeless.

Rating:
Summary: this is help; this is hope
Review: Marie Balter is an example for all who have mental illnesses. She was able to pick herself up with the support of friends and faith in herself and in God. Buy it for the ones who really need to hear that all is not lost, that they can survive and thrive even with a mental illness.

Rating:
Summary: Very engaging and uplifting.
Review: Nobody's Child is a powerful and extremely engaging nonfiction novel. It focuses on the life of Marie Balter, a rigorously troubled woman. Marie begins her life as an adopted child and shortly after becomes mentally ill. She spent the first twenty years of her life traveling from mental institution to mental institution. The novel focuses on her experiences while being hospitalized. It is powerful and bleak, but at the same time, it is also an encouraging and uplifting story. Marie later goes on to recover and earn her Master's degree from Harvard University.

The book features black and white images of Marie's adoptive family, herself, and some of the hospitals in which she had stayed.

It was a very grim awakening for me, and I wouldn't recommend the book to everyone. Those who enjoyed books such as Prozac Nation and Girl, Interrupted would enjoy this captivating novel.

In 1986 Marlo Thomas went on to star as Marie Balter in a made-for-television movie, also titled Nobody's Child.