Visit Nancy Mairs' website: www.nancymairs.com. View the discussion guide for UU communities: HTML or PDF

In a blend of intimate memoir and passionate advocacy, Nancy Mairs takes on the subject woven through all her writing: disability and its effect on life, work, and spirit.

"Graceful yet gritty paradoxes drive this extraordinary book, which uses the author's degenerative disease, multiple sclerosis, as a window into a very particular soul. . . . Let the reader understand: this is not a book about MS, or about illness; rather, it's a chronicle of inspired adaptation, spiritual as well as physical, to limits. The aim is the creation of joy."
-Sallie Bingham, The New Mexican

"Woe is not her, as she makes clear throughout this absorbing, laceratingly honest book. . . . This social construction of disability . . . is what Mairs most wants us to 'get' in this passionate, penetrating book-and then get over."
-Marian Sandmeier, The Washington Post Book World

"Vintage Mairs: sharply observed, deeply personal and always direct."
-Michael Haederle, Los Angeles Times

"As helpful as Mairs's book will be to disabled people, what's most important about it is its lessons for able-bodied readers."
-Kathi Wolfe, The Progressive

"Rich, startling and utterly absorbing."
-Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Mairs's physical view of the world may be waist-high, but her intellectual and spiritual range is limitless."
-Donna Seaman, Booklist, starred review

"'One sharp instrument is left me: my tongue.' This [Mairs] wields like a finely crafted baton, leading her readers to an ever deeper understanding of the human condition."
-Yvonne Duffy, Detroit Free Press

Nancy Mairs is author of several acclaimed books, including Ordinary Time, Carnal Acts, Remembering the Bone House, and Plaintext.