Keene resident Robyn Shumer’s memoir chronicles her struggle with the eating disorder that surfaced in her childhood. By the time she was 8 years old in 1982, she was terrified that the scale in her doctor’s office would show her to be over 40 pounds. The New Jersey school she attended didn’t assuage her fears, either — a third grade teacher told her she had “elephant legs.”

The three sections of “Bones” (Starve, Heal, Thrive) follow that girl through high school, college in New Hampshire, graduate school in Washington, D.C., relationships, jobs and eventually a home in the Adirondacks with her husband and two children. It’s a complicated and difficult journey, because all the usual stressors — family, academics, dating, friendship, etc. — are impacted by Shumer’s obsessive desire to control her weight.

She reminds the reader how different an eating disorder is from other conditions. Everything in her world reminded her of the significance of a woman’s weight. A person with leukemia, for example, is not beset with images and reminders of their cancer. But photographs of Farrah Fawcett and the Sports Illustrated swimsuit models in her brother’s room told Shumer that a woman’s body image was paramount. In this way, Shumer educates the reader about anorexia, providing insight into how and why food, which provides nourishment and pleasure for most, becomes a problem for many.

But “Bones” is not a book about an eating disorder, it is about a person. What is best about the book is not what one learns about a medical condition, but that we care and root for the person who has that condition. We are relieved when Shumer meets a counselor in college who provides a new diagnosis and a new suggestion: clinical depression and Prozac. Then, “Everything started to change after that. Instead of reading books about people suffering … I began reading books about people healing.”

What follows is no straight line to personal and professional success, but there is acceptance and growth. Shumer has now written a book about people healing. It is a well-written story of courage, persistence and hope.