Oliver Sacks called The Siege: A Family's Journey into the World of an Autistic Child "one of the finest personal accounts of autism, and still the best—beautiful and intelligent." Now, in Exiting Nirvana, Clara Claiborne Park continues the story of her daughter Jessy. In this moving, eloquent memoir, we see Jessy's progressive journey out of her isolated "Nirvana" into the world we all share. It is an honest and captivating story of emergence, perseverance, and love.

Jessy Park, now an adult, still struggles with language, with hypersensitivities and obsessions, and with the social interactions that ordinary people take for granted but that she cannot understand. With the help of family, teachers, and friends, Jessy has achieved more than her parents could have hoped for. She has left behind the extraordinary repetitive calculations of her autism for the utilitarian tasks of determining her share of the grocery bill and balancing her checkbook. She has grown into an accomplished artist—her astonishing paintings transfigure the ordinary world with the rainbow colors of Nirvana. More important, she has overcome her social handicaps enough to hold a job, becoming not a burden but a contributing, active member of her family and community.

Exiting Nirvana is a luminous, moving story about the making of a self and what it means to be human, an account Jessy's mother must tell for her, since she cannot tell it for herself. But most of all it is a remarkable story of growth, not only in Jessy but in everyone who has touched her and whom she has touched.

At age two, in 1960, Jessy Park was remote, withdrawn, unable to walk or talk, yet oddly content within the invisible walls that surrounded her. Doctors were baffled. The study of autism was still in its infancy. Jessy's family stepped in. "Confronted with a tiny child's refusal of life, all existential hesitations evaporate. We had no choice. We would use every stratagem we could invent to assail her fortress, to beguile, entice, seduce her into the human condition." This powerfully moving book, now widely regarded as a classic work, charts a surprising journey of discovery as it records the challenges and rewards of the first eight years of Jessy's life.

Visit www.jessicapark.com to view the Paintings of Jessica Park.