"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. "A powerful exploration of navigating physical disability . . . Every chapter is filled with memorable analogies and metaphors, making Linnell’s journey to partial recovery a pleasurable intellectual experience for readers despite the horrors, fears, and winding mental path through rehab . . . A stunning account."― Kirkus, starred review “A powerful look at what goes through the mind of someone whose life changes in the blink of an eye.”― Booklist “[ Take It Lying Down ] is unique in Linnell’s combination of honest physical details, ironic humor, struggles against self-pity, tantrums, gratitude, and creative literary excursions . . . Linnell admirably succeeds at capturing the 'blessing wrapped in a curse,' and the comedy in the tragedy of coming to terms with the unpredictability of our mortal lives.”― The Pharos "[Jim Linnell's] writing style is unique and offers a strong description of his experience that leads the reader to feel what he feels . . . It can add much to the education of medical students in the way that Jim details his experience navigating the emotional recovery of a sudden mind-body disconnect. He gives us a window into his psyche during the hardest and most intimate moments of his life."― The Journal of Humanities in Rehabilitation “A great book that deserves a place along with Kubler-Ross and de Quincy. With remarkable clarity, insight and humor, Linnell shares his journey―from the simple misstep on an evening walk with his wife that left him a quadriplegic, through the agonizing chamber of horrors known informally as 'rehab'―to a reconciliation with his fate and the strength to move forward . . . Despite Linnell’s arduous, incomplete journey, chronicled with such detail as to make the angels weep, the residual experience of reading the book is, surprisingly, one of courage and a refreshing if ironic optimism. His spine may be ravaged but his vision is clear. His prose is simple and impatient, always leaning forward as if eager to get to the next idea, the next image, the next step. He may not be able to walk but he’s always a step or two ahead of the reader, which is the secret of a page-turner . . . If the definition of art is to turn human experience, no matter how distressing, into something beautiful, Jim Linnell has produced not only a work of art but a manual for survival. We are all richer for his achievement.”― Marshall Brickman “This profoundly literate memoir of courage stuns and moves, and in its ferocious honesty, delights as few books have over a lifetime of reading the true and fearless sagas of relative strangers who become intimate soulmates.”― Mark Medoff , Tony award-winning playwright, Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Children of a Lesser God “Paralyzed, unable even to breathe on his own, in the aftermath of spinal cord injury Jim Linnell calls to mind what he has learned from a lifetime of teaching, producing, and writing about theater. The ancient Greeks in their tragic dramas ‘know you are screwed. They teach: look it in the face; you will not collapse or cower at catastrophe.’ He understands the power of speaking directly to an audience and affords us an intimate closeness as he and his life partner make a way out of no way. In this account of hellish injury and harrowing recovery, Linnell dramatizes his belief that ‘the question―how to live―is a question to ask and not