A Measure of Endurance: The Unlikely Triumph of Steven Sharp

Now in paperback, this book records the remarkable, heartwarming story of a courageous teenage boy who, after being gravely injured while using a farm machine, takes on its powerful manufacturer and wins. Steven Sharp was a hardworking, energetic sixteen-year-old, growing up happily in a tiny farming community in the eastern Oregon high desert. His family was his harbor. Nothing pleased him more than the outdoor life, fending for himself in the nearby mountains. In the last hour of the last day of a summer job on a local ranch, his life was changed forever when a huge baler suddenly and mysteriously turned itself on and severed both his arms. Slipping in and out of consciousness and stumbling through a field, he followed a fence to a nearby house. Soon he was on an airplane and hoping time was on his side. His recover was amazing. He maintained his optimism and zest for living and returned to school, joking to reassure his classmates on what could have been an awkward first day back. Eventually, he was back in his beloved mountains, hunting and fishing with the hospital’s prosthetics and his own rigged-up rifle compensating for his missing arms. He was always convinced that the machine had malfunctioned, but had no intention to seek redress―farm life has its risks and compensations. By a quirk of fate, however, a friend recalled a notice in a three-year-old magazine and he learned that others had been injured while using the same kind of machine. How, with the help of a brilliant and idealistic trial lawyer named Bill Manning―whose commitment to Steven seemed something of a completion of his own spiritual journey―Steven took on the multinational, multibillion-dollar company, withstood their counterattack, and emerged triumphant. (Read an interview with Bill Manning, in which he discusses Steven Sharp, the case, Anthroposophy, and his friend, author William Mishler.) A Measure of Endurance is gripping, poignant, and truly unforgettable.