Peggy began the Family Room blog after her book, See Sam Run, a mother’s story of autism, was published in 2008 by the University of North Texas Press. The book’s manuscript won the Mayborn Prize for Literary Nonfiction. The memoir chronicles her son’s first four years of life. Sam was diagnosed with autism at age 4 in the early 1990s, just as the disorder was becoming more widely known and better understood.

When Sam was young, early autism research was not widely available, so the family took on each day like pioneers living on the prairie frontier. That hasn’t changed much now that Sam is an adult. Adults with autism confront challenges fraught with unknowns. Resources remain scant for the millions of people with autism like Sam who were diagnosed as children and are now brave-hearted young adults. Peggy continues to explore the issues her family faces on these virtual pages.