Kimberly Elkins

What Is Visible Kimberly Elkins

What Is Visible is a debut novel about Laura Bridgman, a woman who lost her senses of hearing, sight, taste, and smell as a child, and became world-renowned decades before Helen Keller. Left with only her sense of touch, she was taken in by Dr. Samuel Howe at the Perkins School for the Blind. She was trained there to the point that she became, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the second most famous woman in the world after Queen Victoria. Dr. Howe exhibited her far and wide to raise money for the school and to show off his great "professional" talents; world-famous figures came to see her and befriended her.
This novel tells her story from Bridgman's very closed but intense perspective, and the points of view of Dr. Howe and several devoted teachers.