"What Is Visible" first appeared in The Atlantic, March 2003, in a different version, and then in Best New American Voices 2004, and the 2005 McGraw-Hill college textbook Arguing through Literature. The prologue first appeared in a different version as "Laura Bridgman, Age Fifty-Nine, the First Deaf-Blind Person to Learn Language, Meets Helen Kellwer, Age Seven" in The Drum. Chapter 17 first appeared in a different version as "The Letter" in "Printer's Row," the literary supplement to the Chicago Tribune, October 7, 2012"--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references.

Presents a fictionalized account of the life and challenges of Laura Bridgman, the first deaf and blind woman to learn language, and those who helped her, including the founder of the Perkins Institute, with whom she was in love, and her beloved teacher.