Overview

After contracting polio as a young girl Martha Mason of tiny Lattimore, North Carolina, lived a record sixty-one of her seventy-one years in an iron lung until her death in 2009, but she never let the 800-pound cylinder define her. The subject of a documentary film, an NPR feature, an ABC News piece, and a widely syndicated New York Times obituary, Martha enjoyed life, and people. From within her iron lung, she graduated first in her class in high school and at Wake Forest University, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She was determined to be a writer and, with her devoted mother taking dictation, she became a journalist-but had to give up her career when her father became ill. Still, Martha created for herself a vast and radiant world-holding dinner parties with the table pushed right up to her iron lung, voraciously reading, running her own household, and caring for her mother when she became ill with Alzheimer's and increasingly abusive to Martha. When voice-activated computers became available, Martha wrote Breath, in part as a tribute to her mother. ""This book is her story,"" writes Anne Rivers Siddons in her preface, ""told in the rich words of a born writer. That she told it is a gift to everyone who will read it. That she told it is also as near to a miracle as most are likely to encounter.""

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9781608191192

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Reviews

In this fascinating book you will meet the Martha Mason I've known since my days of writing for the Charlotte Observer. I have long been inspired by the way she has lived so courageously and gracefully above the tragedy of her circumstances. I have hoped she would tell us her story, and now she has done it. She writes as beautifully as she lives. Patricia Cornwell Martha Mason writes, with eloquence and fearless clarity, about one of the most extraordinary lives I've ever known of. Her phenomenal strenght, courage and joy in life are rock-strong lessons to almost all the rest of us. Everyone, me included, who gripes more than once a month should have a copy of Martha Mason's book in every room of the house. Reynolds Price Martha Mason has spent her physical life imprisoned in an iron lung. But her radiant spirit and buoyant wit have sustained a generation of friends. Now, with Breath, you'll meet an extraordinary woman whos wings will lift you high. This is a remarkable book. Anne Rivers Siddons Martha Mason has told the story I have wanted her to tell since I first knew her as a brilliant and courageous student at Wake Forest more than forty years ago. Her book is a glorious tribute to the creative spirit and to life itself. Edwin G. Wilson, Provost Emeritus, Wake Forest University

Author Information

Martha Mason, who is believed to have lived longer in an iron lung than any other person, resided in her family home in Lattimore, N.C., attended by three faithful assistants. She died in May 2009.

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