First published 2001
A. Manette Ansay had devoted her life to becoming a concert pianist when a mysterious muscle disorder struck at nineteen. The condition progressed rapidly. By twenty-one, she could no longer hold a pen or cross a room on her own. No doctor could diagnose her illness or predict her future. At twenty-three, confined to a motorized wheelchair, Ansay faced an uncertain existence in what she calls limbo. She made a New Year's resolution to try writing fiction. The words became her escape from a body that had betrayed her, filling hours once claimed by music practice. Writing offered the closure she had previously found in prayer. Thirteen years later, after publishing five books but still without answers about her condition, Ansay examines how one life's destruction can birth another. She explores how physical uncertainty challenged her deepest beliefs about existence and faith in ways that proved transformative rather than purely destructive.
Genres: autobiography, biography-memoir, 21st-century, disability
Vibes: intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: overcoming-adversity, personal-transformation
Period: 21st-Century
288 pages · Hardcover · William Morrow
Content warnings: medical-trauma