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A memoir for a real story of courage and hope

The memoir, called "Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope," to be released by the Associated Press(AP)on Nov. 15, 2011, is the most personal and detailed look yet at Gabrielle Giffords' struggle over the past 10 months to relearn how to walk and talk, and her painful discovery that 12 others were wounded and six killed in the Jan. 8, 2011 attack, during a meet-and-greet with voters outside a supermarket.

After the shooting, doctors said the bullet traveled the length of the left side of the congresswoman's brain, entering the back of the skull and exiting the front. At the time, her doctors have declined to speculate on what specific disabilities Giffords may face as her recovery progresses.

The book is written by Giffords' husband, former astronaut Mark Kelly, but Giffords delivers the last chapter - a single page of short sentences and phrases entitled "Gabby's Voice" in which she vows to get back to Congress. "I will get stronger. I will return," she says.

Giffords, 40, stunned colleagues by appearing on the U.S. House floor in Washington on Aug. 1 to vote for the debt ceiling deal.

The new book details months of intense therapy and Giffords' emotional battle to come to terms with what happened when a gunman opened fire in Tucson and shot her in the head. Kelly recalls trying to tell his wife several times what had happened that Jan. 8 morning, when Giffords was shot in the head while meeting constituents. But she didn't fully understand until March 12.

Kelly writes that after she learned of the deaths, Giffords was overcome with emotion and had trouble getting through her therapy. Six months later, Giffords wanted to know who had been killed that day. That caused her to moan and cry in a wave of emotion. Kelly writes that he held her as she processed the information and wept.

When Kelly first saw Giffords after the shooting at a Tucson hospital, he wrote that he was shocked at her state: She was in a coma with her head partially shaved and bandaged, her face black and blue, her body connected to a bunch of tubes.

He also describes the early days in Giffords' recovery and rehab in Texas, saying that the darkest moment came when Giffords panicked because she realized she couldn't talk.

The book reveals that because of her injuries, Giffords has lost 50 percent of her vision in both eyes.

We are planning, in this website following to this article, to describe, in a series of articles with the above title, the detailed story of this american congresswoman and how she could not only survive her dangerous wound, but also to recover much of her abilities to move, hear, see, speak and to think in a relatively a short time, which is considered by many people "a miracle."