An Arrow Through The Heart
a woman's story of life, love and surviving a near fatal heart attack

by Deborah Daw Heffernan
new book 306 pages

It happened without warning. She was fit, ate all her vegetables, never touched a cigarette. There was no family history. yet somehow, at age 44 and in the middle of her weekly yoga class, Deborah Heffernan felt her heart explode....

After emergency surgery, a once healthy and vital woman was left with half a functioning heart, a defibrillator under her skin and the looming prospect of a transplant.

An Arrow Through The Heart is the unflinching chronicle of that first - and potentially, last - year after the author's near-death. It is a story of raw emotions, from childlike bewilderment and despair to jubilation, that folloowed her return to the world. Anchored by the fierce love of her husband and by their two families, who set aside their differences to rally around her, she learned to do simple things all over again.

One breath at a time, she regained the strength to climb a flight of stairs, walk around the block, even to resume yoga - always knowing that a deadly arrhythmia might cause 'the box' to fire in her chest. Five years later she has not needed the transplant the doctors predicted would be needed within two.

But the heart is more than a muscle, and this is as much a story about healing the soul as well as the body. Above all, it is about rebounding after catastrophic change, a testament to the unexpected joy that can come from living each day as though it is your last....