The reader knows by page one of Queen for a Day that Mimi Slavitts three-year-old son is autistic, but if anyone told her, she wouldn't listen, because she doesn't want to know--until at last Danny's behavior becomes so strange even she can't ignore it. After her son's diagnosis. Mimi finds herself in a world nearly as isolating as her son's. It is a world she shares only with mothers like herself, women chosen against their will for lives of sacrifice and martyrdom. Searching for miracles, begging for the help of heartless bureaucracies while arranging every minute of every day for children who can never be left alone, they exist in a state of perpetual crisis, normal life always just out of reach. In chapters told from Mimi's point of view and theirs, we meet these women, each a conflicted, complex character totally unsuited for sainthood and dreaming of the day she can just walk away.

Adult,Brodart.