You might say Sandra Pimentel wrote an unintentional memoir. What began as a piece of writing about her and her husband Paul’s experience taking in two troubled young brothers in 1972 turned into a story about her life.

After writing her account of Frank and Julius, brothers and recovering drug addicts from the inner city of Detroit, she showed it to local storyteller Susan Klein who encouraged Mrs. Pimentel to fill out what happened before and after her experiences with the two boys.

“She felt it was a compelling, exhausting story and that people weren’t going to understand why we did it, and that they needed to know who Paul and I were in order to accept the risk we took,” Mrs. Pimentel said. “And then the next thing we know there were 340 pages.”

Sandy Pimentel, 74, was born in 1942 and grew up in a section of Quincy called The Point. She was born into a family of immigrants, Italian and Scottish, and generosity is a theme that runs through her life and memoir. It also informs the meaning behind the title, Blind Acceptance, which she had selected before she started putting pen to paper.

“I looked at all the aspects of my life and it was a theme,” she said. “I had to figure out, why did I take these risks, what prompted me? And then I realized that it started with my grandfather, who was a generous man, and my father, and it has trickled down and now my children and grandchildren are incredibly generous. It was a theme that has prevailed and a theme that has sometimes gotten me into trouble.”

After graduating from high school, Mrs. Pimentel attended nursing school outside of Boston. She started dating a young born-again Christian man from Texas whom she met at a church youth group. When that man left for military training in 1962, her friend Paul Pimentel intervened.

“This relationship is a bad idea,” he said. “You can’t love a guy like him, it’s impossible.”

Paul’s words of caution worked and soon he and Sandy began dating. They were married in 1965 and began a journey that would take them to California for Paul’s Navy training, and later to Albion, Mich. where they settled with their three young children. This was during the late 1960’s and racial tensions were high. She and Paul became active in church forums and discussions about racial integration and inequality. Mrs. Pimentel also became friends with a local cashier, an African American woman named Barbara Gladney.

“It wasn’t easy to sort through it all,” Mrs. Pimentel writes in her book, “but when I talked to Barbara, I began to think critically for the first time about racism, and I came to realize that it had been cultivated in me. I determined that I would never allow it to show its ugly face...so I decided that my every action would be put through a filter of equality, with the hope that it would change me, and change the world.”

Over dinner one night, the Pimentels and the Gladneys decided to start a dinner club called The Melting Pot, where all members of the community were welcome. It became so popular that it was moved from small homes to large event halls.

“New friendships and networks had developed that would have been presumed impossible — progress was undeniable,” she writes.

The Pimentels also housed an interracial couple attending Albion College and later, after Mr. Pimentel’s job transferred the family to Wynton, N.Y., they took in a troubled young man and recovering drug addict from Detroit named Frank.

This was a period when Mrs. Pimentel began suffering from depression and anxiety. Later, in 1993, she would learn that she suffered from hypothyroidism, and medication would finally balance out her body chemistry. But in the early 1970s, to alleviate those feelings, Mrs. Pimentel overcompensated by helping others. Which is where brothers Frank and Julius come into the picture.

A neighbor told the Pimentels about Frank, a teenager from Detroit who was a recovering drug addict who needed a place to stay for awhile. Without hesitation they offered to help and moved Frank into their attic. It was a comfortable arrangement and the Pimentels took to him right away. But a couple of months later, he went to visit family in Detroit. When he returned he brought along his brother Julius, a heroin addict who was just starting to go into withdrawal. After Julius was discharged from the hospital several days later, he moved into the attic with Frank and became a part of the family. But there would be many challenges ahead, challenges that were a reflection of the racial tensions of the time.

Mrs. Pimentel admits that some of the more graphic details of Julius’ detox and later violence are difficult to read for some, but that they were necessary in telling the story that still haunts her all these years later.

“I always wondered if I was the worst mother in the world because there was a lot of chaos in the house,” she said. “But all of the kids turned out very well and all of them are dedicated in one way or another to the same work Paul and I have done all of our lives.”

It took Mrs. Pimentel three years to write Blind Acceptance, which was finished in August and published in October. Recently she gave a reading at Martha’s Vineyard Community Services and has a series of readings scheduled in California, Massachusetts and Florida over the next couple of months. So far, she is pleased with the response.

“I think Paul’s point is right, over the arc of time the book does show changes for women, changes in society,” she said. “We were boxed in. I’m lucky in a lot of senses that Paul and I grew together, but a lot of women didn’t have that.”