Taking the Fall: Life After a Boy Scout Zip-Line Ride Went Horribly Wrong

by Summer Miller

After a horrifying zipline accident at a local Scout-O-Rama, Summer Miller discovers that she must move away from a life of children's birthday parties and perfectly folded napkins to become the vigilant caretaker in charge of her family's recovery. Not only have the Boy Scouts been remiss on that terrible day in following their mottos of "Be Prepared" and "Safety First," but she finds others can be functioning under the same automatic pilot of "authority" which breeds these horrible mistakes. A nurse, a doctor, a lawyer can fail to be "awake" enough to observe a situation and remedy it, and their need to be right, to be an authority, prevents them from expressing their natural human compassion. Summer bravely faces the debilitating consequences of the accident and finds that her newly learned vigilance must be practiced as well with the lawyers, the medical experts, the personal counselors and even one Girl Scout leader she must deal with on her path to return her family to wholeness. Along the way she learns that karma comes in many guises and that only by stepping out of the learned social complacencies of life can one begin to control one's own destiny and have a chance at creating the life one wants. Dramatic, intense and insightful, Taking the Fall is laced with Summer's own marvelous sense of humor that prompts as many tears of laughter as the tears of sorrow that come over her family's unnecessary tragedy.

210 pages, Paperback

First published December 12, 2012

Reviews

[Carmen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Summer’s memoire details her struggles through a horrible accident and an extremely difficult recovery she must navigate through the rest of her life. It’s evident throughout her story that her life’s calling will be that of caregiver and protective matriarch. Her words--her narrative, speak to the universality in our experiences as women, mothers, wives and daughters. I think that a bit of her voice resonates in each of us. The pain in her story is palpable, but Summer’s strength is too. It was a relief to me that her struggles did not reach the tragic depths of a Dickens novel, but they were nonetheless real, and her spirited determination made me cry as though I'd just read Dickens. I have high regard for this first-time author.