Synopsis "beyond recognition (in English)"
From Greg Page, the bestselling author of Camel Red, comes Beyond Recognition, the inspiring true story of Lawrence J. Heron, the man who saved an entire infantry battalion at the cost of an all but guaranteed future in professional sports. Told through the eyes of his incredibly beautiful and devoted wife, it covers their lives from when they met as children in the idyllic company town of Hopedale, Massachusetts to the end of their incredible journey. Just as Heron received football scholarships to Notre Dame, and offers to play professional baseball for the Boston Braves and New York Yankees, war propelled him to the shores of France and into the heart of the Normandy Invasion. Ironically, his athletic prowess proved his undoing when, as the only man with the speed and endurance to carry it out, he volunteered for a suicide mission. Though he succeeded in saving upwards to a thousand comrades, a sniper's bullet exploded a mortar round in his hands and one at his feet. Barely surviving a gauntlet of horrors that left him blind as well as burdened with excruciating and unrelenting pain, he refused to die just so he could reunite with his wife. He not only survived but together they started a family, raised four lovely children, and he lived an active, eventful fifty more years of life. Woven into the fabric of this amazing account is a wonderful love story, some of the most incredible coincidences on record, and undisputed proof of the existence of psychic phenomenon. This epic journey defies belief, unfurls in fast-paced novel fashion, and almost automatically turns pages as you read the account of how a record-setting high school athlete became the most severely wounded Army to return from World War II, and the story of the incredibly swift and miraculous recovery and rehabilitation that followed.
