Description
Book SynopsisThe searing, wry memoir about a woman’s fight for a new life after a devastating brain injury. When Sarah Vallance is thrown from a horse and suffers a jarring blow to the head, she believes she’s walked away unscathed. The next morning, things take a sharp turn as she’s led from work to the emergency room. By the end of the week, a neurologist delivers a devastating prognosis: Sarah suffered a traumatic brain injury that has caused her IQ to plummet, with no hope of recovery. Her brain has irrevocably changed. Afraid of judgment and deemed no longer fit for work, Sarah isolates herself from the outside world. She spends months at home, with her dogs as her only source of companionship, battling a personality she no longer recognizes and her shock and rage over losing simple functions she’d taken for granted. Her life is consumed by fear and shame until a chance encounter gives Sarah hope that her brain can heal. That conversation lights a small flame of determination, and Sarah begins to push back, painstakingly reteaching herself to read and write, and eventually reentering the workforce and a new, if unpredictable, life. In this highly intimate account of devastation and renewal, Sarah pulls back the curtain on life with traumatic brain injury, an affliction where the wounds are invisible and the lasting effects are often misunderstood. Over years of frustrating setbacks and uncertain triumphs, Sarah comes to terms with her disability and finds love with a woman who helps her embrace a new, accepting sense of self.
Trade Review“Powerful in its depiction of the author’s will to rise above the limitations of her disability… With a mission of giving voice to the voiceless, Vallance shares the little-understood experience of surviving a traumatic brain injury.” —Kirkus Reviews “Sarah Vallance was a PhD with a high-level career when a fall from a horse resulted in a traumatic brain injury that caused her IQ to plummet to 80. Given that she’s written a beautiful new memoir, you know she’s recovered—but her book is less about reaching that destination and more about learning to care for one’s self and others.” —Washington Post “One of the most astonishing books I’ve read in a long time…A testament to the determination of the human spirit to just survive, and live.” —Curve Magazine “[This] inspirational story is a good reminder to fake it until you make it—and not let anyone else define your limitations.” —The Advocate
