A Life Impossible

From NFL player Steve Gleason, a powerful, often harrowing memoir of love, heartbreak, resilience, and remarkable triumph in the face of ALS.

In 2011, three years after leaving the NFL, Steve Gleason was diagnosed with ALS, a terminal disease that paralyzes the entire body. Doctors gave him three years to live. He was thirty-four years old. As Steve says: he is now 10 years past his expiration date.

His memoir is the chronicle of a remarkable life, one filled with optimism and joy, despite the trauma and pain and despair he has experienced. Written using eye-tracking software, Gleason covers his pre-ALS life, through the highs and lows of his NFL career with the New Orleans Saints, where he made one of the most memorable plays in Saints history, leading to a victory in the first post-Katrina home game, uplifting the city and launching him into football stardom. Then came his heartbreaking diagnosis. Steve lost all muscle function, he can't speak without using a Stephen Hawking-type computer apparatus, and he can't even breathe on his own. This book captures Steve's and his wife Michel’s unmatched resilience as they reinvent their lives, refuse to succumb to despair, and face his disease realistically and existentially—and defeat it. 

This unsparing portrait argues that a person's true strength does not reside soley in one’s body, but also in the ability to face hopelessness and still be able to love and treasure life.