The Sound of Her Voice: My Blind Parents’ Story is the inspiring chronicle of a remarkable couple (both blind since childhood) who — against all odds — lived full and productive lives. Mario became the first blind graduate of the University of Notre Dame Law School and was later elected Judge of two different county courts in Muncie, Indiana. 

Jane, who was fiercely independent from a young age, ran the household and raised four sighted children without outside assistance. Capable and confident from the start, Mario and Jane Pieroni lived abundant and gracious lives, overcoming the constant challenges they faced.

A beautiful memoir so poignant that it reads like fiction, this inspirational first-hand account is told by their youngest child, Mary Pieroni Harper, a retired social worker. “I grew up in a loving household with parents who were patient and kind,” she tells us. “Our family looked like other families who were at Sunday Mass or on television (my main frame of reference as a child). Yet Mom and Dad’s eyes didn’t light up when they saw me or darken when I did something wrong. They had no idea what I looked like.”
Using extensive archival material — including recorded audio and video interviews, and family photos — Harper offers up a tale both historical and future-facing, helping us understand how the world unfolded for generations past and what is possible for generations to come. With clarity and emotional vulnerability, Harper takes us on an odyssey that extends more than a century.

We travel through time during her parents’ childhoods and watch them mature and fall in love during their education at the Indiana School for the Blind. And Harper gives us powerful glimpses of her own life — then and now — as one of four children who could see her parents but whose parents only knew her by touch and sound.