Finding My Voice

In Finding My Voice, the nationally acclaimed public radio host Diane Rehm tells the story of her remarkable life -- a story in three acts. First, her childhood: She was raised in a traditional Christian Arab household -- her parents were immigrants from the Near East who had a grocery store in Washington, D.C. It was a household dominated by rigor and fear, and Rehm's account of her mother's emotional and physical abuse is chilling. Her young girl's intelligence and energy helped her survive, though the cost to her self-esteem was substantial. After a brief early marriage and divorce, she embarked on a second marriage, to John Rehm -- a marriage rockier than many but one that has endured and flourished, and in which they have happily raised their two children. Then, in her thirties, as she found her life as a housewife/mother starting to push her into depression, Rehm began by a stroke of good fortune to volunteer at WAMU-FM, then a small public radio station in Washington, and found