Blue Shy: Brain Injury and Hope

Sacramento author Barbara Link recently published a memoir, Blue Shy: Brain Injury and Hope.It traces the path from despair to hope that accompanied her daughter's traumatic brain injury incurred during a criminal attack.

Link's narrative begins with the most shocking phone call that a parent can ever receive telling of the attack on her daughter, Ellie.Then the story begins to chronicle the hospital stays, the traumatic year post-injury and the eventual good recovery. Inserted into her narrative are e-mails from Ellie, written in present time ten years after the attack. The e-mails use creative spelling and syntax but they are full of caring for others, wise and humorous. They chronicle Ellie's every-day life as she attempts to attend college and live independently.

Blue Shy also is the story of challenges to the mother/daughter relationship created by the injury. Despite the difficulties their relationship is actually strengthened.

Overall, Blue Shy shows victims and families that they can get through this dark period and go on to live a fulfilling life.

Barbara Link received her MA in creative writing from Mills College in Oakland. Her powerful memoir, >Blue Shy, was awarded first prize the Sacramento Friends of the Library contest, and excerpts have been published in Kaleidoscope and American River Review. She is also a co-author of Coffee and Ink, a manual for writing groups. Her fictions and poetry have appeared in numerous literary magazines, and in 2008 she received the Bazzanella Prize at Sacramento State University for graduate fiction. KVPR, a National Public Radio affiliate, has aired four of her short stories on Valley Writers Read. Barbara lives and writes in Sacramento, California.