This is the true story of Genie, who spent the first 12 years of her life confined and constrained in a single room by her father and emerged for the first time into the outside world when her half-blind mother left him. Genie was then virtually unable to speak and had no social skills, and awkward and limited mobility. Fought over by psychologists, linguists and other experts, for a while she developed rapidly in hospital and a succession of foster homes, learning the rudiments of language, and charming, with her compelling presence, all who met her. Then, almost as abruptly as it had begun, her progress halted, while the academic and professional tussles over her future continued.