In broad outline it sounds like a fairy tale: the daughter of a full-blooded Oklahoma Osage Indian and a determined Scots-Irish mother, Maria became one of the world's legendary performers before her twenty-third birthday. Hers is a story of passion and commitment, an unvarnished memoir that trembles with the joys and rigors of a dancer's life - a woman who, like Colette, Coco Chanel, or Maria Callas, understood that a committed talent could transform the world around her.

Present at the creation of the world-famous New York City Ballet, she became the inspiration and wife of George Balanchine, the century's extraordinary ballet master. Together they brought dance to center stage in America's cultural life.

Maria Tallchief thrilled America in the title role of Balanchine's first Firebird, reduced audiences to awed silence in his Swan Lake and Orpheus, and created the role of Balanchine's "Sugar Plum Fairy" in the ballet Nutcracker, which will delight audiences of all ages as long as dancers perform it. How all this magic was achieved is the heart of this fascinating self-portrait; the soul is the dancer herself.