Not by Accident: Reconstructing a Careless Life - Hardcover

Samantha Dunn was raised in northern New Mexico and spent years in Australia and France. Her novel Failing Paris was nominated for the PEN/West award. She lives in southern California.

These two engaging memoirs by California freelance journalists demonstrate how lives, family, and friends change after serious accidents. Thrown and trampled by her horse, Dunn (Failing Paris) survived with a badly fractured leg requiring extensive reconstructive surgery and the threat of future infection and amputation. As she convalesces, she candidly reviews her life and reflects on what it means to be accident-prone. Is this calamity not the first, but the most serious just a coincidence, or does it indicate something deeper that needs to be examined? Barely able to walk again, she takes up yoga, explores complementary therapies, and embarks on a path of emotional and physical healing. Dunn concludes that her accidents were an unconscious message telling her that she did not care enough about herself and her future. She returns to writing, divorces her husband, gets back on her horse (literally), and survives a second fall. Both active sports enthusiasts, Parker and her retired scientist-husband, Ralph, were planning to move to Colorado when he was knocked off his bicycle and paralyzed from the neck down. In a series of short essays that first appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle and other publications, Parker candidly relates the fears and frustrations of learning to be a primary caregiver for a quadriplegic. Friends desert her, but colorful Momma Scott and her African American neighbors step in to lend emotional support. Two live-in personal attendants, an ex-con, and a Tibetan immigrant form an unconventional household centered on caring for Ralph and for one another. With humor, Parker spares no details describing the personal routines; the clashes of class, culture, and caregiving; and her delights in new friends and small pleasures. Both books are recommended for public libraries. Lucille M. Boone, San Jose P.L., CA
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