FeralChildren.com says The compelling story of a young woman's emergence into the world after spending her first 13 years strapped to a chair, and her rescue and exploitation by scientists hoping to gain new insight into language acquisition, and, indeed, just what it means to be human.

Product Description The compelling story of a young woman's emergence into the world after spending her first 13 years strapped to a chair, and her rescue and exploitation by scientists hoping to gain new insight into language acquisition.

Amazon customer review © Rymer offers a journalistic account of one of the most important events in psycholinguistics: the discovery in 1970 of a 13 year old child (the eponymous Genie) who had been kept in solitary confinement since the age of two by her abusive father. Found shortly after Lenneberg's proposal that there was a critical period for language learning, which finished at puberty, she provided a human laboratory to disprove or support theories about child language acquisition. However, Rymer's book does not limit itself to linguistic issues. It is also a blistering attack on the insensitivity and selfishness of the scientific community's treatment of Genie. For a more academic treatment try Genie: aPsycholinguistic Study of a Modern-Day Wild Child, the doctoral thesis of linguist Susan Curtiss. Of all the researchers who worked with Genie, Curtiss is perhaps the only one whose behaviour was beyond reproach. Her account is thorough, warm-hearted and highly engaging. For a quick introduction to the case, try the transcriptof Secret of the Wild Child, a PBS broadcast.

Amazon customer review © I don't have a lot to say that the other reviews haven't addressed, so I'll keep it short.
This is a book about such lofty subjects as neurolinguistics and scientific ethics, yet it remains wonderfully readable to the average (but curious) person. It's a fascinating story (see the other reviews), but Rymer's real achievement here is rendering what could have been dry scientific data interspersed with horrific tales of abuse into a book that at no time exploits its subject for cheap sentimentality. We care about Genie because her shot at normal life was twice aborted, not because Rymer simply wants us to.
Recommended to any curious mind.

The paperback edition of Genie: An Abused Child's Flight From Silence. You may also see it under the name Genie: Escape from a Silent Childhood.