After the Crash

by Martin Spinelli

Overview

A deeply moving true story of how a father and son used tragedy to transform their relationship

In the pit of my stomach, as I kissed my four-year-old son Lio and my darling wife Sasha goodbye, I knew something was up. By that evening, the police had told me about the crash.

Lio's bright and talented mother was killed that day, and he narrowly escaped the same fate. But instead of it being an ending for us, the crash was a beginning.

Lio's miraculous recovery from severe brain damage and a coma defied medical science. As I witnessed his astonishing journey—from intensive care bed to 10 Downing Street—and fought to pull him through horrific injuries and the loss of his mother, I found real purpose and meaning for the first time in my life.

Here is the story of four-year-old Lio's incredible recovery, and how his father Martin and he rebuilt their lives. Much more than a moving personal story, the book is a guide for not just surviving disaster, but mastering it and using it to transform one's life for the better.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781780575223
Publisher:	Mainstream Publishing Company, Limited
Publication date:	04/01/2013
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.70(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Martin Spinelli is a media, film, and music professor. In his twenties, as a reporter, anchor, and producer in Buffalo, New York, he produced award-winning news features for NPR as well as the acclaimed literary series LINEbreak. Both his benchmark radio art series Radio Radio and LINEbreak are included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Television and Radio in New York while all of his radio work and writing are archived in the Martin Spinelli Collection at the University at Buffalo Library. He was the founder of the Academic Radio Program at the City University of New York at Brooklyn College where he produced the AIDS-informational soap Welcome to America broadcast on Radio Africa International. His many essays about media art and history have been published in anthologies as well as journals, such as Postmodern Culture, Convergence, and Object.

Table of Contents

Part 1

In the Mountains 13

Where to Be 32

The Crash 53

Reviving Lio 78

A Storm Diary 92

Part 2

Chocolate Mousse 115

Time with Sasha 137

Nissan Micra v. Scania Lorry 155

Telling Your Child 170

Part 3

The Media and the Victim Statement 195

A Burglary 223

Counting the Taxis 235

Part 4

Number 10 247

Io Spio 274

40 Years 298

Dear Mr Vandermeulen 315

Tackling Giants 318

A Beacon 334