THE LITTLE LOCKSMITH

I just now finished reading a book that I can never forget and will surely read again. THE LITTLE LOCKSMITH, its title misleadingly like that of an antiquated children's book, is as honest and intelligent and transcendent a book as I've ever come across. More than any book I know, it inspires living with courage and creativity.

This memoir by Katharine Butler Hathaway was a bestseller in 1943, reissued in the year 2000. Here's what the NEW YORKER said: "When (she) was five, she fell victim to spinal tuberculosis. For ten years she was strapped to a board...and for the rest of her life, though she could move about, she was hopelessly deformed. Her body never grew any larger than that of a ten-year-old child. Her imagination, her understanding of herself, and her vision of the modes by which her life could be transformed--these, however, grew greater and greater." THE NEW YORK TIMES said, "You must not miss it."

I first learned of this radiant book through an essay by Lee Smith in the anthology REMARKABLE READS (in which I had an essay on novels about India). Lee's essay was called "The Most Luminous Book I Read" and it described, incidentally, how this memoir helped her through a difficult stretch in a novel she was working on. I was moved by that piece and then forgot to go and get the book. Last night, I ran across it in the library.

You might as well go ahead and buy it. You'll want to keep a copy, I expect.