In 2017, at the age of 62, the writer and filmmaker Stephen Trombley left his native America for a simpler life in rural France. He found a little place in the southwest, but after only five months, he was struck down by a stroke that left his right arm paralyzed and his brains scrambled. 

While he was in hospital, his relationship failed. Alone, broke, and with only a schoolboy’s grasp of the language, Trombley found himself completely dependent on the French medical system. As soon as he was able, Trombley started keeping a diary, recording his long and painful journey from the land of the well to the land of the disabled and, he hoped, back again. The result is a candid, vivid, often darkly funny, and ultimately uplifting account of medical catastrophe and survival far from home. 

Essential listening for anyone who has had a stroke or who lives with someone recovering from a stroke, it is a classic of its kind.