Anne Sullivan's Knowing Hands

When Anne Sullivan arrived at the Keller home in Tuscumbia, Alabama, in March 1887, she met a seven-year-old girl trapped behind walls of silence and darkness. But over the next forty-nine years together, Sullivan came to know Helen Keller with an intimacy that astonished everyone who witnessed it. She could read Helen's mood from the tension in her fingers. She knew what Helen was about to say before the signs were half-formed.…