Other editions of book I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

The autobiographical novel I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, published in 1964 by Joanne Greenberg using the pseudonym Hannah Green, recounts the experiences of a young girl who suffers from a mental illness. The novel draws from the author's own experiences in this story of Deborah Blau who struggles through childhood, fearful and sometimes even terrified by her circumstances. In an attempt to come to grips with a world she has trouble understanding, the protagonist creates an interior world of her own, one that includes various characters and an archaic language. As the young protagonist becomes more deeply entrapped in the world that she has created, the external reality begins to fade away.