Review: Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope

Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope by Gabrielle Giffords
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Written largely in the voice of Mike Kelly, with the help of co-author Jeffrey Zaslow, this is not a book by Giffords, per se, who was largely in recovery while it was being written. She does contribute a final, page-long afterword. Mostly, this book covers their courtship and the long (but interesting) aftermath and recovery of the shooting. All this while Kelly was preparing and carrying out captaining the Endeavour on its final mission, STS-134, to the International Space Station (ISS) in May 2011. (After the conclusion of STS-134, Endeavour was formally decommissioned.) From the outside seemed like a movie starring Bruce Willis as the astronaut married to a plucky, ebullient congresswoman played by Sandara Bullock. This memoir makes it no less ... American - and tragic. I had no idea how long and arduous was the recovery for Gabrielle Giffords's recovery, and much is in here that will explain to anyone what that sort of rehab is like. (She prefers not the diminutive "Gabby" for her professional persona.)

Two interesting surprises for me here:

1. NASA maintains remote private residences on the Florida "Space Coast" that Kelly and Giffords had some quiet time at and could have been used for furtive assignations in the more unruly 70s.
2. Giffords kept a bullet-damaged part of her skull in the freezer to share with visitors.

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