In the last hour of the last day of a summer job on a local ranch, his life was changed forever when a huge baler he was inspecting suddenly and mysteriously turned itself on and severed both of his arms. Slipping in and out of consciousness, stumbling through a field, he followed a fence to a nearby house. Soon he was on an airplane, hoping time was still on his side. His recovery was amazing. Somehow he maintained his optimism and his zest for living. In the hospital, his desire to get on with his life inspired both his doctors and his fellow patients. He returned to school, joking to reassure his classmates on what could have been an awkward first day. His relaxed, down-to-earth manner put his family and neighbors at ease. Finally he was back in his beloved mountains, hunting and fishing with the hospital's prosthetics and his own rigged-up rifle compensating for his missing arms. Although he was convinced that the machine that had injured him had malfunctioned, he had no intention of seeking redress - farm life had its risks and rewards. He wasn't going to dwell on the past or let his setback change his way of life. But by an amazing quirk of fate - a friend's memory of a notice in a three-year-old magazine - he came to learn that others had been similarly injured while using the same kind of machine. Now, with the help of a brilliant and idealistic trial lawyer named Bill Manning, whose commitment to Steven seemed something of acompletion to his own spiritual journey, Steven took on the multinational, multibillion-dollar company, withstood their counterattack, and emerged triumphant. SYNOPSIS Poet and retired literature scholar Mishler tells how Sharp lost both his arms during a summer farm job when a baling machine malfunctioned, how he survived, adapted his life to the loss, and eventually sued the manufacturer. Annotation ®2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR FROM THE CRITICS Publishers Weekly This is a well-paced, vibrant chronicle of the trials, both physical and legal, endured by Steven Sharp, a farm boy from rural Oregon who, at the age of 17, lost both of his arms in an accident involving a defective hay baler. Given the emotional nature of the topic, Mishler does a fine job of telling a compelling story without indulging in purple prose or mawkishness. That's not to say, however, that he doesn't highlight the tragedy of Sharp's ordeal. After all, Sharp was an athletic, outdoorsy kid who was specifically chosen to run the baler because of his presence of mind and attention to safety. That Mishler never gets carried away with melodrama, however, may owe to Sharp himself and his nearly stoic reaction to his plight. The people of the community come across as real rather than bucolic stereotypes, and the dialogue, filled though it is with phrases like "I ain't" and "It don't," is not overdone. Mishler keeps the legal struggle between Sharp and the manufacturer animated, though it drags a bit at times, particularly since the crux of the issue comes down to one's definition of the word "off" (as in, had Sharp really turned the baler off before trying to clean it). The defense attorneys are not rendered in a favorable light, but they're hardly demonized. In all, Mishler offers an absorbing account of a tenuous legal battle and, more strikingly, a resonant portrait of a determined individual for whom some small measure of victory was recouped for all that he lost. (Sept.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information. Library Journal Severely injured by an accident with farm machinery, Oregon native Steven Sharp persevered through pain and disability to reclaim his life and ultimately find justice in court against the machine's multinational manufacturer. Aside from the circumstancES... Published at Twenty Four dollars  Knopf Publishing Group 0-375-41133-X / 9780375411335
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