The author
Danielle Steel has a long list of best selling books to her credit. When you pick up one of her books you are guaranteed a good read.
The book
Winners is a wonderful book filled with a fantastic cast of characters. The story centers around Lily Thomas, who lost her mother at a very early age. Lily loves to ski and won a Bronze metal in the Junior Olympics the year before at age 14. She is training for the Winter Olympics and this time she hopes to win the gold. Lily and her father always spend the Christmas Holidays in Squaw Valley so they can get in some skiing. A winter storm is moving in, so Lily hurries out to the slopes where she and her favorite ski instructor, Jason Yee, hope to make a few runs down the mountain before they close the lifts. The unthinkable happens, Lily and Jason are on the lift headed to the top when a cable snaps dropping them onto the mountain below. Jason doesn’t make it and they bring Lily off the mountain almost frozen and with a spinal cord injury.
Jessie Matthews is the neurosurgeon operating on Lily that night. She has spent most of the night repairing the damage to Lily’s spine, only to learn that while she was in the operating room her husband and youngest son were in a car accident. Her son came away with cuts and bruises but her husband died instantly.
At first, Lily’s father is unable to accept that his daughter will never walk again. He is convinced that another doctor will be able to help Lily. It takes a long list of specialists in Zurich, London, New York and Boston before he will admit that his daughter is paralyzed. Once Bill Thomas excepts that his daughter will live her life in a wheel chair, then he starts looking at the possibilities. Lily is one of the lucky ones, her injury is low enough to allow her to live a normal life. A little higher and her breathing could have been effected. Winners, centers around Lily’s rehab and the people that help her. The rehab hospital where Lily spends the first 4 months takes children fourteen and up. There is a need for someplace to take younger children and Bill Thomas decides to build such a place for them. Bill gets the help of an old friend while trying to get Jessie to agree to head the project for him. Out of a tragic accident you see the lives of six people change for the better.
Winners is a story of hope and friendship, a story of possibilities and of never giving up. Winners is a story that will steal your heart. Winners is definitely a winner.
Happy reading, Linda
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