On My Own Two Feet

From the bestselling author of NEVER TELL ME NEVER and DARE TO FLY comes a surprising and poignant new memoir.

In 1986, champion cross-country skier Janine Shepherd was training for the Winter Olympics when she was hit by a truck and suffered life-threatening injuries. Janine was told that she would never walk again. That story was recounted in her bestselling memoir NEVER TELL ME NEVER, which was subsequently made into a telemovie starring Claudia Karvan.

Not only did Janine confound her doctors by learning to walk again, but she also learned to fly a plane and became a commercial pilot and aerobatics instructor. Despite the medical belief that this would be impossible, she married and had three children. That moving and inspirational story is the subject of DARE TO FLY, which also describes the incredible response to her first book and the way the Australian public opened their hearts to Janine.

The next chapter in her life appeared to be stable and idyllic—buying a farm and moving to the Southern Highlands with her husband and three kids, running the farm, continuing with her aerobatic and flying training, and learning to ride a horse. Janine, being Janine, not only learned to ride but also dressage, and she learned it so well that she was in the running for selection in the Paralympic Equestrian Team for the Athens Olympics.

Then the unthinkable happened. Her husband, Tim, became seriously ill and suddenly, her long-held dream of country life began to crumble. ON MY OWN TWO FEET is the honest and often heart-wrenching account of Janine's struggle to save her family from an unpredictable and devastating illness that threatened to tear them apart.

Anyone who has gained strength and inspiration from Janine's previous books will be saddened and touched but ultimately uplifted by this incredible story, told with her characteristic warmth, integrity and humour.