You are here: Home » News » Giffords-Kelly Memoir Due November 15

Giffords-Kelly Memoir Due November 15

Posted by: Linda Carbonell on October 21, 2011.

VP Joe Biden, Capt. Mark Kelly, Rep. Gabby Giffords, retirement ceremony at White House (photo by David Lienemann, White House)

It has become common practice for the authors of non-fiction books to record the audiobooks themselves. Fiction is best left to the professionals. (Debbie Mazur’s readings of the Janet Evanovich Stephanie Plum books are genius.) But no one was prepared for the news about the audiobook version of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ and Capt. Mark Kelly’s joint memoir.

Publisher Scribners has announced that Capt. Kelly has recorded all but one chapter of the memoir, and Rep. Giffords recorded the final chapter.

Wow.

It has only been nine months since Rep. Giffords was shot in the head by Jared Loughner in the parking lot of a Tucson supermarket. She has been in public only on very rare occasions – Capt. Kelly’s last shuttle launch, the debt ceiling vote in Congress, her husband’s retirement ceremony – and only a small number of people have heard her speak. Her physical recovery has been extraordinary, but her speech recovery has been slower. Her staffers have reported that Giffords hesitates when she speaks, seeming to search for words, but she composes complex thoughts and turns them into sentences. The audiobook will provide people their first opportunity to hear how her speech ability has progressed in the past nine months.

Kelly and Giffords wrote the “deeply personal” joint memoir with Wall Street Journalist Jeffrey Zaslow. It details their early lives and careers, their meeting and courtship, their three-city and space marriage, and the horror, pain, struggles and triumphs of the last nine months.

Dr. Christina Kwasnica, of Barrow Neurological Institute, told USA Today that reading aloud is a common therapy for brain injury victims regaining their power of speech. “It is common for brain-injury patients to be very self-conscious of how they appear to other people, especially when it comes to public speaking. There are certain preconceived notions of what your intelligence is based on how you speak.” Speaking in public is an essential in Rep. Giffords’ career, from speaking on the stump while campaigning to debating bills in Congress. If all the reports about the recovery of Rep. Giffords’ cognitive abilities are accurate, it may well come to down to how she has fared in recovering her ability to speak clearly as the deciding factor in her running for re-election next year.

Rep. Giffords represents the area around Tucson, Arizona, in the House of Representatives, but since the shooting, she has only been home once to visit. She was transferred to Houston from Tucson as soon as she was stabilized because of the exceptional rehabilitation facility there and the proximity to the Johnson Space Center where Captain Kelly was stationed. She is still living in Houston and attending rehabilitation therapy daily.

Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope will hit the bookstore shelves and internet on Tuesday, November 15. Sheer curiosity could drive the audiobook sales to higher levels than are usual for non-fiction.