Lee Woodruff

"An inspiring, intimate memoir about faith, resilience and the tenacity of love."--People "In this emotional tale, a young couple see their lives changed in the blink of an eye--and learn to find love again."--US Weekly Five months pregnant, on a flight to their "babymoon," Allison Pataki turned to her husband when he asked if his eye looked strange and watched him suddenly lose consciousness. After an emergency landing, she discovered that Dave--a healthy thirty-year-old athlete and surgical resident--had suffered a rare and life-threatening stroke. Next thing Allison knew, she was sitting alone in the ER in Fargo, North Dakota, waiting to hear if her husband would survive the night. When Dave woke up, he could not carry memories from hour to hour, much less from one day to the next. Allison had lost the Dave she knew and loved when he lost consciousness on the plane. Within a few months, she found herself caring for both a newborn and a sick husband, struggling with the fear of what was to come. As a way to make sense of the pain and chaos of their new reality, Allison started to write daily letters to Dave. Not only would she work to make sense of the unfathomable experiences unfolding around her, but her letters would provide Dave with the memories he could not make on his own. She was writing to preserve their past, protect their present, and fight for their future. Those letters became the foundation of this beautiful, intimate memoir. And in the process, she fell in love with her husband all over again. This is a manifesto for living, an ultimately uplifting story about the transformative power of faith and resilience. It's a tale of a man's turbulent road to recovery, the shifting nature of marriage, and the struggle of loving through pain and finding joy in the broken places. Praise for Beauty in the Broken Places "Bold and commendable . . . A strength of this memoir is Allison Pataki's] scrupulous honesty."--USA Today "A memoir about . . . determination and gratitude, and the value of putting one foot in front of another during a crisis."--The Washington Post "Heart-wrenching."--Women's Health"Powerful and immersive . . . Pataki delivers an insightful look at how two people faced a life-altering test as a team 'fighting to make the dreams of our future possible.'"--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Proud, industrious, creative, generous, and patriotic—that’s the spirit of America! In this collection of 101 stories about the spirit of America and what makes our country great, you’ll read about: America’s heroes—service members, military families, veterans, and first responders9/11 fifteen years later—the families, the rescuers, the air traffic controllers who were on duty, the spirit of a united nation in the days that followedOur vast and beautiful land—from beaches to mountains, from tropics to desertTraditions—from baseball to apple pie to parades to our national parksAmerican ingenuity, from the space program to made-in-America to our can-do attitudeOur generosity and compassion— we are a nation of helping handsOur diversity and our proud new citizensThe red, white, and blue—our flag and what it means to us

This collection of 101 stories provides support, advice, and inspiration to help you and your loved ones on your road to recovery from Traumatic Brain Injuries. These are inspiring and motivating stories of hope, healing, and hard work for patients and their loved ones who are recovering from TBI. You’ll read chapters on: But You Look So Normal—What it’s like living with TBISelf-Discovery—Embracing and accepting the new normalNever Giving Up—The power of persistence and hard workHealing Power of Mother Nature—Get outside and heal! Acceptance—Rebuilding your life with your new realityA Family Affair—Giving and accepting help from those you loveAttitude Is Everything—Staying positive and seeing the goodCoping Strategies that Work—Great advice from other survivorsOpportunity Knocks—New chances, new careers, new purposeMaking a Difference—The healing power of helping others

A bright June day. A split-second distraction. A family forever changed. Life is good for Maura Corrigan. Married to her college sweetheart, Pete, raising three young kids with her parents nearby in her peaceful Chicago suburb, her world is secure. Then one day, in a single turn of fate, that entire world comes crashing down and everything that she thought she knew changes. Maura must learn to move forward with the weight of grief and the crushing guilt of an unforgivable secret. Pete senses a gap growing between him and his wife but finds it easier to escape to the bar with his friends than face the flaws in his marriage. Meanwhile, Maura's parents are dealing with the fault lines in their own marriage. Charismatic Roger, who at sixty-five, is still chasing the next business deal and Margaret, a pragmatic and proud homemaker, have been married for four decades, seemingly happily. But the truth is more complicated. Like Maura, Roger has secrets of his own and when his deceptions and weaknesses are exposed, Margaret's love and loyalty face the ultimate test. Those We Love Most chronicles how these unforgettable characters confront their choices, examine their mistakes, fight for their most valuable relationships, and ultimately find their way back to each other. It takes us deep into the heart of what makes families and marriages tick and explores a fundamental question: when the ties that bind us to those we love are strained or broken, how do we pick up the pieces? Deeply penetrating and brimming with emotional insight, this engrossing family drama heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.

Bart Goldstein was only sixteen when he suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) in a car accident in 2001. No Stone Unturned is the saga of Bart's struggle to regain his life. Told from his father's point of view, the book chronicles the family's ordeal, and flashbacks fill in Bart's life since he arrived from Korea at the age of five months. Considering every possibility in their search for remedies to Bart's catastrophic injuries, the Goldsteins explored several promising alternatives, including craniosacral, hyperbaric oxygen, sensory learning, and vision restoration therapies. Bart's remarkable recovery resulted from a combination of conventional medicine and alternative and emerging therapies. TBI has now become the "signature injury" for thousands of wounded warriors returning from Iraq and Afghanistan; this timely book offers profound insights into what survivors and their families must face. Anyone struggling with this "invisible" disability will find the book insightful, inspiring, and useful.

On the heels of her acclaimed book In an Instant, the #1 New York Times bestseller she wrote with her husband, ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff, and with the same candor and charm, Lee Woodruff now chronicles her life as wife, mother, daughter, sister, and friend. Woodruff's deeply personal and, at times, uproariously funny stories highlight such universal topics as family, marriage, friends, and how life never seems to go as planned. From raising teenagers ("Now with a boy and girl on the precipice of serious adolescence, the bathroom door is sealed tighter than a government nuclear testing ground") to how she copes with tragedy ("Swimming surrounds me in the velvet wet of a bluish green world where I can dive deep down and sob with no trace"), Perfectly Imperfect: A Life in Progress is the testimonial of a woman who embraces the chaos of her surroundings, discovers the splendor of life's flaws, and accepts that perfection is as impossible to achieve as a spotless kitchen floor.

In January 2006, Lee and Bob Woodruff seemed to have it all-a happy marriage, four beautiful children, and marvelous careers. Bob had just been named co-anchor of ABC's World News Tonight, but then, while he was embedded with the military in Iraq, an improvised explosive device went off near the tank he was riding in. He and his cameraman, Doug Vogt, were hit, and Bob suffered a traumatic brain injury that nearly killed him. In an Instant is the frank and compelling account of how Bob and Lee Woodruff's lives came together, were blown apart, and then were miraculously put together again-and how they persevered, with grit but also with humor, through intense trauma and fear. More than a dual memoir of love and courage, In an Instant is an important, wise, and inspiring guide to coping with tragedy-and an extraordinary drama of marriage, family, war, and nation. #1 New York Times Bestseller "Gripping . . . The Woodruffs' devotion to each other is palpable. . . . In an Instant is] a remarkably lucid, even engrossing story of . . . Bob Woodruff's recovery, interwoven with tales from his marriage and family life."-San Jose Mercury News"Both Woodruffs shoot] from the hip, writing with candor about their ordeal and describing it with an intimacy that couldn't be captured on camera. . . . Their frankness heightens the book's impact."-The New York Times "Extraordinary . . . All sorts of themes thread their way through this frank, inspiring book: courage in the face of adversity; the pursuit of career at the expense of family; the bravery of foreign correspondents; the fortitude of female friendship. . . . Woodruff's survival story comforts."-The Seattle Times "A testimony to the power of the human spirit, to the catharsis of love and to infinite hope."-The Oklahoman www.bobwoodrufffamilyfund.org