About After the Crash

A young couple, Martin and Sasha, fall in love in a remote corner of the Italian Alps. They marry, have glittering careers and a charming, precocious son named Lio. Then, one beautifully clear Thursday morning as Sasha was driving to work with Lio on his way to nursery school in the back seat, a truck driver who had been on the road for sixteen hours without a break fell asleep at the wheel and hit them from behind. Sasha was killed instantly and Lio suffered multiple skull fractures and a shattered and mutilated left leg. After the Crash follows Lio’s recovery from brain damage so severe he wasn’t expected to walk, talk or even breathe unaided ever again. It tells how this incredibly strong and tenacious four-year-old pulled himself back from the edge of death and the loss of his mother to create for himself not just a “normal” childhood but an exceptional one. With remarkable power and honesty, the book puts us in the room with them as they battle dire prognoses, negative expectations, monstrous insurance companies, and profound grief all in an effort to heal his little boy—a boy that only Martin seemed to know had not lost his boundless potential.

After the Crash is the story of a recovery so astonishing it led Lio to meet the Prime Minister of Great Britain, the CEOs of international airlines and professional footballers on the sidelines of Wembley Stadium. But it’s also the story of Martin’s profound emotional and spiritual evolution from anxious, highly driven academic to a father utterly devoted to his son’s recovery and capable of finding intense happiness in the simplest of things. So much more than a moving personal story, After the Crash is a handbook for dealing with disaster—not just surviving it but mastering it and using it to transform your life for the better.