The buildings of the Warm Springs Polio Foundation had a kind of fading beauty.

NPR: Excerpt: 'Warm Springs'

Mass, generally attended by the staff at Warm Springs either on their way to work or on their way home.

NPR: Excerpt: 'Warm Springs'

Much of my free time at Warm Springs was spent figuring out the best way to be liked by the people I wanted to like me.

NPR: Excerpt: 'Warm Springs'

It sounds like summer camp, but Warm Springs was in fact a retreat with a mission: to heal the spirits and bodies of Americans who'd been afflicted with polio before the Salk vaccine was developed in 1954.

NPR: True Stories to Dive Into This Summer

Shreve, who's the author of 13 novels, has written an engrossing, somewhat offbeat memoir called Warm Springs, about the period, between ages 11 and 13, that she spent at the famous sanitarium, where she seems to have been the reigning mistress of misrule.

NPR: True Stories to Dive Into This Summer

Roosevelt's hard- won belief in the benefits of what we would now call "holistic treatment" governed Warm Springs, and his jaunty spirit was everywhere especially strong, Shreve recalls, in the dining hall, where a chair at the head table was always left vacant.

NPR: True Stories to Dive Into This Summer

The Springboks play the Free State Cheetahs in Bloemfontein on Tuesday 16 September, in the first warm-up game, and meet the Gauteng Falcons in Springs, near Johannesburg, on 23 September.

BBC: SPORT | Rugby Union | Internationals | Boks start Cup countdown