The Horizontal Woman: The Story of a Body in Exile

While bending down to pick up her infant daughter, Berger suffered a freak spinal injury that kept her flat on her back for seven years. Initially, use of a wheelchair was impossible, because sitting up for more than five minutes was too painful. Through courage, determination, rehabilitation therapy and the support of her husband, she learned to walk again, and this intensely lyrical, introspective, deeply moving journal charts her triumph over years of confinement, isolation, depression and outpatient treatment. A Pushcart Prize-winning poet and freelance writer, Berger sensitively records her life's cataclysmic changes. As friends deserted her, she coped with chronic, grinding pain, cooked while supine and worried about instilling fear and panic in her growing daughter. Those affected by sudden injury will find her story inspirational. Translation/film/audio rights: International Creative. (Aug.)