by Glennis James (Author)
For nearly a century, the North Princeton Developmental Center had housed people suffering from a range of mental disabilities. In 1997, due to budgetary constraints and changes of priority at state and federal levels, the Center was scheduled to be shut down, its residents to be "de-institutionalized" and placed in boarding houses, supervised apartments and group homes. This meant profound upheaval for the residents - many of whom had spent their entire lives at the Center - as well as for the employees, who had made lasting professional and personal commitments to the Center and its residents. Two years before its scheduled closing, Glennis James, a caseworker for New Jersey's Department of Human Services, volunteered to transfer to the Center for the temporary job of assisting in the transition of its residents out of the institution and into the surrounding community. Beyond the Wall is a memoir of her experiences. It gives the reader a revealing glimpse into the daily lives of those who receive state care, as well as of those who have chosen the profession of social worker - with all its complexities, frustrations and rewards. By turns heartbreaking and inspiring, Beyond the Wall paints a vivid and moving group portrait of the many lives impacted by the transformation and dissolution of a state institution.
Author Biography
Glennis James was born in New York City in 1943 and raised in Princeton. She was married in 1965 and, with her husband, raised two children in Yardley, Pennsylvania. While raising her family, she worked first as a high school teacher, then as a social worker for the state of New Jersey. Upon their retirement, Glennis and her husband moved to Cushing, Maine, where she became director of the Cushing Library. Shortly after completing Wylies Harbor, a novel about coastal Maine, and Beyond the Wall, she died in 2007 of complications due to breast cancer. She was 63.