April 6, 1972. A gunshot—a bullet fired by accident lodges in Patrick Segal's spine and pins him to the ground, his fate sealed. In that instant, a young man in his prime—twenty-four years old, an athlete—finds himself cut off from the world of the able-bodied.
But a year later, from a wheelchair and alone, Patrick leaves for China to try acupuncture. His legs do not recover. Yet something in him grasps an instinctive truth: victory begins in the mind. Despite his handicap, he decides to live with renewed passion.
Two years on, still in his wheelchair, he begins a journey around the world as a photoreporter.
This book is both an urgent travel diary and a testimony to the power of will—to Patrick's fierce choice to relearn how to live: to breathe, to move, to ski, to ride, to swim, to traverse the world.
It is a book that makes you want to live, and to help others live. It shows, plainly, what place a severely handicapped person can claim within the society of his time.