Bruce Von Stiers

One of the smaller publishing houses that I receive material from is GreyCore Press. They have some unusual and delightful titles. Three of their titles that I have recently reviewed are Conjuring Maud, The Water Thief and Done In By Innocent Things. The latest offering from GreyCore Press is a non fiction book by an amputee. The author of the book is Paul Martin. The title of the book is One Man’s Leg.

The book has 19 chapters along with an Introduction. It has 240 pages and was copyrighted in 2002.

The book is about the life and times of the author, Paul Martin. In the Introduction, we meet Paul. He is in a jail cell. The rest of the book tells us how Paul eventually got to the point where he landed in the jail cell that’s described in the Introduction.

Paul begins his tale in a chapter entitled My Best Interest. It details some of his youthful escapades and the subsequent punishments. We find out how his family moved about from place to place. They lived in Gardner, Massachusetts and in Costa Rica. His family eventually settled back in Gardner where Paul starts getting into trouble.

We find out about how Paul used paper route money to fuel his video game habit. And we find out how he tried to cover it up. We learn a lot about Paul’s dysfunctional family. He had a sister that took off for the West Coast after trying to help keep the family afloat. His mother left the family and his oldest sister was a model student. Then we have Paul, the all around party animal and screw-up.

Paul finds his niche on the ice playing hockey. He even attends college for a while. Then things get the better of him and he decides to go to work in the real world. He does iron work, manhandling I beams several stories above the ground. Through a few chapters of the book, we find out how Paul floundered and finally landed into what he thought would be his career. He would become an engineer. He would complete college and get a job in the engineering field. And finally he does.

During these chapters we read about how Paul has many injuries, some of which could have been fatal. One such injury causes him to lose part of a leg to amputation. This is where the real theme of the book comes in. Paul decides that a loss of a limb will not limit him in anything he wanted to do.

We learn about Paul’s slow rehab and how he gets fitted for a prosthesis. He then begins to think about the athletic accomplishments that could be had by an amputee. He plays hockey, rides bikes and even skis About the whole second half of the book deals with Paul’s trials and tribulations as an impaired athlete.

When I was reading the book I tried real hard to feel sympathy for Paul. He really seemed to have quite a few bad breaks. But most of them were of his own making. His mistakes were ones that a lot of us make. Only for Paul, one of those mistakes cost him his leg. But before I could get too high on my pillar, I reminded myself that I was once like Paul, partying all the time, not really realizing that one slip could end a career or even my life.

One Man’s Leg is not only about the struggle of Paul trying to become an ace athlete who’s lost a limb, but how he finally grew up and was able to realize the wealth that we all have in our lives each day. He tells us about speaking before groups of children and having an impact on a child’s life that would not have ever happened if he had chosen a different path to follow.

Far from being an exciting, page turning trashy expose, One Man’s Leg is Paul Martin’s way of giving encouragement to amputees so that they know that there are real opportunities out there if you want to pursue them. And that all of his struggles could have been avoided by not living a wild and wooly lifestyle.

One Man’s Leg is set to be released this fall by GreyCore Press. To find out the exact release date, or to get more information on the book, visit the GreyCore Press web site. It can be found at www.greycore.com.