Immersion : A Linguist's Memoir

Immersion is a memoir that takes the reader on a captivating emotional and physical journey through Linda Murphy Marshall''s life: from the longstanding, crippling impact of family members'' low expectations and abuse, to her discovery as a young adult that she possesses special skills in foreign languages. Linda is taught from an early age that she has little of value to offer the world. But her love of and affinity for languages enables her to create a new life - to separate herself from her toxic environment and to build a successful, decades-long career as a professional multilinguist. It''s a rewarding vocation, but a challenging one: her assignments with the US federal government take her on some hair-raisingly dangerous journeys, some to countries with unstable governments and even active war zones. But these sometimes-harrowing experiences teach her how to open the ''windows'' around her, unearth her true self, and develop a healthy sense of self-worth - and ultimately, paradoxically, her work and travel so far from home allow her to come home to herself.