Is this the picture?

Here is a link that might be useful: Cover - Promised to me

Froniga, the photo looks too modern to be Helen Keller. The style of the makeup particularly points to it being a 1970s portrait. I also did a google image search for pictures of HK, result see below. Not much resemblance.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:2117311}}

This is very strange. Martin, the cover of the book your site shows is an entirely different picture, yet it is the same book/same author. That person is obviously not Helen Keller.
Anyanka, your picture of Helen Keller is not the one on the cover of the book I'm talking about but the resemblance is still obvious.
I'll try to find the picture if I can. It's one I remember seeing of her years ago.
The publishers have apparently reprinted and published the book a second time with a completely different cover. I'm hoping somebody has a copy like mine.

Froniga, how about this one?
Sorry I can't get it to come up by itself, scroll down a bit.

Here is a link that might be useful: Is this the one?

Veer, that's the one! But I noticed that when I clicked on that one, I was told "That item is not currently on our online inventory."

I did find the photo of H.K. I was thinking of in a gallery of H.K. pictures. Maybe the link will show you the one I mean.

Here is a link that might be useful: Here's the Picture

Perhaps the artist who did the cover illustration had been inspired by the photo of Helen Keller.

Very mysterious. I have searched the web. The only place that showed this particular cover happened to be "out of stock." Since the book was published in 2003, it seems odd that the cover has changed completely with no way to buy the original.
It's not a painting. It's a photo. And I'm convinced it really is Helen Keller although it may not be the exact picture I found in the gallery.
I'm still hoping somebody on the forum will get to see the actual cover close up (not on a computer screen).

The resemblance is uncanny, but I can't find any photos like the cover of the book in connection with Helen Keller.

{{gwi:2117312}}{{gwi:2117313}}{{gwi:2117314}}

This was really bugging me, so I Photoshopped the head and shoulders of the second photo above onto the photo of the book cover. The facial features were a perfect "fit":

{{gwi:2117315}}

I tend to agree with ideefix that whoever did the cover used the likeness of Helen Keller as the woman on the cover of the book. That might also explain why the new editions of the book have a different cover; maybe there was legal action over the cover and it was changed in subsequent printings. Mysterious.

I think this thread belongs in the CSI: Readers Paradise archives. colormeconfused looks good in a white lab coat.

colormeconfused, you are GOOD! I never dreamed this case would be studied in the "lab." But I feel much better knowing there is now empirical proof.
The legal thing had occurred to me also as an explanation for the sudden change in cover art. The latter cover is a painting but the former says "Cover photo by 'so and so'."

CSI: Readers Paradise! Great idea.

I'm like a dog with a bone (or an intruder's leg) when faced with a mystery. I can't make myself let go. Can I have a black lab coat? White makes me look washed out. :-)

What fun to sit and watch a mystery unfold and get solved. It's these kinds of puzzles that can niggle me to death when I spot them and can't find the answer.

A former boyfriend of mine, a photojournalist, took a picture of me several years ago, and it appeared on the cover of Joan London's 2001 hardcover edition of "Gilgamesh." He had sold rights to that image to Corbis, and apparently someone from the publisher Grove Press chose that photo, which was originally a black and white. On the cover, it is printed in sepia tones and looks just like me--but they changed my hair color, which is actually blonde, and added a beauty mark below my right eye! Just about anything can be done in photoshop, I guess--changing Helen Keller's hairstyle would probably be easy.

I would be surprised if Helen Keller's photo caused the publisher any difficulties--aren't photos over 50 years old in public domain? But perhaps her estate has somehow protected the use of her image...

Photographs that have had their copyrights renewed aren't in public domain, no matter how old. The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act has extended copyright to the lifetime of the author plus 70 years (or 95 in the case of corporate authorship).

Helen Keller International is fairly protective of her image, but I'd say it's unlikely that they got heavy about the use of that image.

This is one of the most interesting threads I've read in a long time.

kkay-I'm like colorme...without the lab expertise, but I'll follow up things-so I went to B&N and found that book-what a stunning portrait. Where was it taken?

ccrdmrbks--The photo was taken while I was sitting in a train in a Paris train station (I've forgotten which one). I lived in southern France, he lived (still lives) in Paris. Mind you, the photographer was very talented. I always looked more exotic in the pictures he took!

What an amazing thread! Thank you all!

Cool photo, kkay. If my photo were to be used on a book cover, it would probably be for a Stephen King novel to provoke squeals of terror and a heart-stopping sense of dread.

Thanks, CMC. I'm with you. Most photos of me are candidates for the wastebasket--eyes half-closed, mouth strangely agape, hair askew. I am emphatically not photogenic. This photo is a rarity, never to be repeated.