Simon Lewis, a Hollywood producer, and his bride of five months, a marketing director for the Los Angeles Music Center, were struck broadside by a pickup truck that hurtled through a Stop at over seventy-five miles an hour. She was killed outright. When he woke after a month-long coma, physically crippled and his mind lost to amnesia, neither he nor his family knew the tests and therapies that were essential for recovery, and would take years. Every fifteen seconds a brain injury occurs, about two million a year, often in car crashes, and these approved but rarely implemented medical protocols are unfamiliar to most survivors.

RISE AND SHINE is Simon’s account of unexpected tragedy, life-affirming courage, and a remarkable story of regeneration, with lessons both medical and spiritual; an inspiring book about what it means to return to life from a near-death experience. It offers survivors and their families hope and information based on the actual recovery experienced by one patient and his family. It tells how they overcame healthcare bureaucracy and regulations, to find answers the system hides. Simon’s recovery shows how much patients may achieve, beyond the limited horizons of insurance-based diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation, to attain maximum regeneration and rebuild life. RISE AND SHINE is available in hardcover from Santa Monica Press.

Interview with the author.