A Single Step

Heather Mills was already a recognized leading land mine activist and a successful model and businesswoman when she and Paul McCartney fell in loveand made headlines all over the world. Her story is extraordinary by any standards, a rags-to-riches account of a remarkable young woman with unusual strength and courage, compassion and humanity.

When her left leg was amputated just below the knee in an accident with a police motorcycle in 1993, it would have been tragic under any circumstancesbut was doubly cruel for a professional model whose livelihood depended on her looks.

But Heather Mills had come too far, and worked too hard, to let becoming an amputee wreck her life. Years of setbacks and traumas had given her the drive and determination needed to cope with this disaster too. Before she turned sixteen she had been arrested, run away from a broken home, joined a carnival, and held down a succession of menial jobs in London. Dealing with losing her leg was merely a new challenge for her.

In A SINGLE STEP Heather Mills McCartney speaks about her commitment to medical relief work, describing her travels and the moving encounters she has had with others who have lost limbs. She also tells of her first convoy of artificial limbs to amputees in Croatia, which she organized in 1994, and the foundation she created that brings life-changing prostheses to men, women, and children in war zones around the world. To date over 27,000 people have been helped.

Told in a wonderfully vivacious, candid voice and illustrated with sixteen pages of personal photographs, A SINGLE STEP is the story of a remarkable woman who proves that adversity can help a person grow in surprising and rewarding ways...and that love can come when least expected to change both destinies and hearts.

PAMELA COCKERILL, who assisted Heather Mills McCartney in the writing of A SINGLE STEP, has collaborated with the subjects of many successful autobiographies, including Marion Sherwood (The Miracle of the Cards), Virginia Williams (A Different Kind of Life), and Jenny Pitman (The Autobiography). She lives in Yorkshire.