I first read Claire Smith’s memoir, Falling into Now in manuscript form and immediately felt it must be published. Not many of us have had to grapple with the single focused life of a professional athlete near the peak of success only to be quite literally thrown into an uncertain future of life after a head injury. Claire’s fatal fall from her horse in the UK eventually turned her to life in a wheelchair. And now she writes, it is where others see her only as an invalid and not the whole person that she is, who just happens to be sitting in a wheel chair. This book gives us the whole person and then some. Claire does not spare us details and now that I have had a chance to read her story in its entirety I am even more impressed with both the quality of the writing and the raw honesty of its writer.

Claire’s ability to weave the text from the past to the present gives us a sense of immediacy throughout the book. Her memory for detail is remarkable as she takes us through her life as a horse crazy young girl on to horse obsessed adolescence and early adulthood.

Just as we get ourselves immersed in her growing prowess as a horsewoman she abruptly brings us to a moment in the present (Now) as she struggles with her willingness to accept her present reality. The effect gives us a glimpse into how it has been for Claire – a moment of remembering how her life used to be and then an abrupt drop into the reality of the present.

My favourite parts of this book (if I even have some over others) are the chapters devoted to her parents as she writes about her mother’s vigil sitting by her bed in the hospital in England willing Claire to wake up and show she could move her legs. or the fact that after she returned to her family farm still very much suffering the effects of her brain injury, her father slept on the floor outside her bedroom door to prevent her getting up in the early hours and falling down the stairs. And this was during the 1998 ice storm when power was out over the countryside and people had to make do with improvised heat.

The book itself is a story of will power and determination and an unwillingness to give up – at first a dogged determination to go back to being the horsewomen she used to be and then, once it finally became apparent that this was not to be, an equal determination to move on into something else but with the same attitude of wanting to compete, be the best and succeed beyond expectations. And she did.

It certainly takes dedication. Claire’s frank rendition of her single-minded determination to succeed as an Olympic athlete gives us a glimpse into the somewhat obsessive world of anyone who wants to be ‘the best’ at any sport. It is not new to know that this dedication takes discipline, sacrifice and hard work – but to hear this in Claire’s clear first person voice lets us in to the mindset of an athlete – that is one who really wants to win. And Claire is open about this, she fully acknowledges that she finally came to understand that it was not the long practice, the gruelling early morning winter rides and the work around horses that counted but it was the public recognition of being good that really mattered and that this need to be seen to ‘be good’ s eclipsed the enjoyment of the experience along the way. At long last, she writes she has learned to live in the moment – to enjoy the journey as much as the dreamed about arrival at the destination.