Mary Ella Fizer raced through the door of the library with a scrap of paper in her hand and a book on her mind.

It had been just a few minutes since the 58-year-old Pikesville woman had collected a recommendation for the book Peace of Mind from another library patron while waiting for the doors of the Baltimore County Public Library in Pikesville to open. Now she was in a hurry.

Fizer wanted that book. She needed that book.

As she stood at the library's general information desk one recent morning clutching the paper bearing the name of the 1946 spiritual tome by Joshua L. Liebman and waiting for a librarian to tell her whether it was available, Fizer shifted her weight from foot to foot and leaned on the counter. Every muscle in her body was poised to hear the verdict.

When the news came, it was good. "They have it," she said excitedly, her unlined face beaming from underneath a floppy yellow rain hat strewn with pink cabbage roses. "They have the book."

To understand Fizer's exuberance about books - she reads five to six a week - and about the library, which she visits every day, it's necessary to know a little about her past.

Books were a mystery to her for most of her life. Fizer never received much formal schooling and was institutionalized by her mother as a child. As an adult, she could pick out words on a page and understand what was read to her, but Fizer couldn't read. She had always been told she was mentally retarded.

It wasn't until she began working with Baltimore educational diagnostician Ann M. Bain in the 1970s that Fizer learned that she wasn't retarded. Instead, she had a severe learning disability and dyslexia that prevented her from learning to read.

Since she learned to read at the age of 39, books have become her passion. At any given time, Fizer has between 20 and 50 unread library books waiting for her in her kitchen, 60 books on reserve and the names of a handful of favorite authors she carries on scraps of paper in her battered brown purse.

Because she doesn't have the space at home or the money to buy books, Fizer, who operates a business running errands for people, has become a familiar presence at the library.

She is an opinionated reader who is unafraid to share her thoughts about a book, always open to a recommendation, and ever willing to talk about something she has read and why she did or didn't like it.

She loved Blessings by Anna Quindlen, thought The Lovely Bones, a best-seller by Alice Sebold, dragged, and said The Mulberry Tree by Jude Deveraux would "blow your mind."

"Everyone knows Mary - she's special," said Pikesville branch manager Pamela Brown, who often sees Fizer reading through the list of newly received books at the library, commenting on each one or racing through the library like a hurricane. "It kind of brings tears to your eyes that such a simple pleasure such as reading would bring someone else such soulful appreciation," Brown said.

Fizer reads novels by Nora Roberts and thrillers by Julie Garwood. She reads histories and mysteries, Mein Kampf and The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats, children's books and books about the Federal Reserve.

"The library is my way to the world," said Fizer. "It's the only way I can learn all of the things that I never learned."

She reads just about anything that interests her, including the Sunday edition of The New York Times. However, Fizer finds it hard to read books about topics such as the Holocaust from beginning to end without a break.

"Real life is too heavy," she said.

Tough childhood

It's no wonder she feels this way. Born in 1944 in Greenwood, Miss., Fizer speaks of a difficult childhood filled with picking and chopping cotton. She didn't go to school or to church. And when she was 11 years old, her mother deposited her at a Tennessee mental hospital. She never saw her brother, her sister or her mother again.

"My mother said I was crazy," Fizer said. "The institution said I was mentally retarded."

Poor, young and black, Fizer got little help in the institution. She was forced to clean and care for other patients, she said.

There was no escape, no other world she could bring herself to imagine, no therapy. Fizer tried to kill herself at the age of 16, sticking a nail in her wrists while in a laundry room. As a result, she was chastised for not doing her work.

"A black person of my age at that time in the South - they didn't care about us," Fizer said.

Help from an 'angel'

In 1964, when Fizer was 20, the institution tried to find her family. It found that she had an aunt who lived on Madison Avenue in Baltimore and put her on a bus. Fizer's aunt found her a job as a maid, and she began working for Anna W. Carton's family in Pikesville. Carton, a lawyer who helped found one of the first law firms for female attorneys in Baltimore, started as Fizer's employer. Over the 30 years they were together, Fizer and Carton became much more than that.

"Mary is really a member of our family," said Carol S. Carton, Anna Carton's daughter-in-law, who lives in Montgomery County.

Anna Carton, who died in 1992, enrolled Fizer in driving lessons and explained the driver's manual to her. She taught her how to count money, opened a bank account for her and taught her the value of saving and spending wisely. And Carton, a library volunteer who loved books so much she often read one a night, brought Fizer to the Pikesville library.

"Mary, one of these days you will find your whole world here," Fizer recalls Carton telling her time and again. Thanks to Carton, Fizer had a library card. "It didn't make no difference that I couldn't read. She knew I was supposed to have one."

Fizer smiled when she thought of the woman who took her in, who helped her set up her business, and whose family still pays for her health insurance and rent.

"Miss Anna - she was my angel," she said.

When a childhood shoulder injury made it impossible for her to work as a maid in the early 1970s, Fizer suffered a mental breakdown. She was hospitalized at Johns Hopkins Hospital for more than a month and upon her release was referred to a psychiatrist, who referred her to Bain, who specializes in teaching children and adolescents with learning disabilities.

The psychiatrist said Fizer had emotional problems but was not mentally retarded. It was Bain who discovered that she was dyslexic and had difficulty spelling and recognizing words.

She could read. She just needed to be taught how.

Fizer was thrilled by the news.

"Once she learned she was able to read, Mary was pretty highly motivated," said Bain, who works at the Forbush School at Sheppard Pratt Health System. "She had an incredible desire to read. I think she just had this idea she wanted knowledge and she wanted information, and she knew that books would give her that."

While learning disabilities in children tend to be diagnosed more readily and at a young age, similar problems in adults can go undetected for years, said Bain. Fizer's case, while startling, is probably not all that unusual given her age and background, Bain added.

Some people in Bain's field believe that if someone hasn't learned to read by high school, it's probably too late. Fizer is proof that that just isn't true, she said.

Reading ritual

Once Fizer is done collecting books, reserving new titles and chatting with the librarians, she can't wait to return home from the library with her treasures.

Reading is reserved for her kitchen table, where she sits with a mug of tea, a pack of cigarettes and her foot propped up on her exercise ball - surrounded by her books. Away from the hustle and bustle of her business taking people to the library and the Giant, safe from the noise and distractions of the outside, she spends hours each night and much of her weekends reading.

Here she is happy.

"Reading has taken me all over the world," Fizer said. "Those books are my life. They're my joy."