Marian Schembari offers insights and inspiration for readers in her emotive memoir, A LITTLE LESS BROKEN. She gives us a look into the secret pangs of an autistic child and the revelations that shed a spark of hope as the little girl recreates herself as an adult.

As the only girl in her family, with three active and apparently typical brothers, Schembari felt pressed by her parents to act differently. But she was acting only as she felt, only as she could. Early in her school life, she began experiencing painful rejection by former friends, along with unfair punishments from her teachers and (at times) her parents. She compulsively chewed her hair but wept when her mother tried to comb it. Sometimes violent, she recalls that “smashing a hole in the wall relieved that steam” of frustrations that constantly beset her.

"Schembari...writes with such a finely honed emotional memory that readers will feel they are with her, frantic, angry and deeply frustrated from her earliest childhood."

Yet Schembari got through high school, attended college and had a youthful love affair overseas, having figured out that foreign travel was somehow sufficiently distracting to be soothing. Her work life, as an aspiring essayist and journalist, was erratic with many firings and job hops. But then she realized that she worked best from home, where she wouldn’t need to interpret other people’s motivations or have them question her abnormal eye contact.

Schembari met a loving man, married and had a darling daughter. But even with them she sometimes broke down, with painful regrets as her worst punishment. She sought help from various sources to little avail, but after weathering many of life’s storms, at age 34 she received the diagnosis of autism, empowering her to declare, “I finally knew who I was.” And through internet contact, her acceptance and exploration of her condition have provided her with opportunities for outreach to other women on the spectrum, to their mutual benefit.

Schembari, whose essays have appeared notably in the New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire and Good Housekeeping, writes with such a finely honed emotional memory that readers will feel they are with her, frantic, angry and deeply frustrated from her earliest childhood. She takes us on her travels --- to New Zealand, Australia and Spain --- and illustrates the tough times in the most ordinary settings, such as school, home and corporate offices. Her experience highlights the medical and sociocultural changes regarding autism. Classmates, family members and coworkers are now generally accepting those with autism instead of branding them as antisocial or emotionally deficient.

A LITTLE LESS BROKEN will provide those on the spectrum with a sense of credence. For those who have not lived it as Schembari has, the book serves as an acknowledgement of the courage it must take to personally deal with its sensitivities and find order and dignity within its boundaries.