"A stunning account."--Kirkus, starred review
"This profoundly literate memoir of courage stuns and moves, and in its
ferocious honesty, delights."--Mark Medoff, Oscar-nominated screenwriter
of Children of a Lesser God
Take It Lying Down is "a movingly intricate weave--a detailed and
poetic chronicle of healing against all odds, an intense love story, a
narrative of a young man's journey from Maine to New Mexico and
adulthood, and a book of literary inspiration and wisdom . . . this is
not a medical book, not a self-help book: it's a literate, occasionally
theatrical, surprisingly buoyant, always philosophical and compelling
journey through one man's life."―From the Foreword by Len Jenkin
Six months shy of retirement and on a family vacation in Mexico, Jim
Linnell steps off the porch of a rented guest house and breaks his neck.
He is medevacked to his hometown hospital in Albuquerque and from there
to a spinal cord injury hospital in Denver, where he learns he may live
the rest of his life as a quadriplegic. How does a person absorb such
news?
Jim's injury is incomplete: He has a two-year window for improvement.
After three months of rehabilitation at the hospital, he and his wife,
Jennifer, return to their home with an armada of equipment for his
therapy, a heavy dose of anxiety about how they will manage together,
and many unanswerable questions: Will Jim get better? What kind of
future will they have? Can they move past denial to accept the
possibility that Jim may remain a quadriplegic?
Take It Lying Down portrays a man reclaiming his life from
catastrophe--it is a book of exemplary courage.
