Burned A Memoir

The history of the Nayers was divided by one violent, accidental moment. In the time it took her to light a match in the cellar of their rented vacation home, Dorothy and her husband Hank were engulfed in a flash fire.

She barely survived, her face scarred beyond recognition, her body required to endure thirty-seven operations. He was scarcely better off, convinced that survival had been the cruelest of outcomes.

Yet the greatest injustice of all was the estrangement of their young daughters, who didn’t see their parents for nine months after the accident. Their reconnection to people who no longer seemed familiar was painful and slow.

Four decades later, their daughter Louise recounts this difficult transformation with a poetic candor that evokes the relentless determination of her mother and the silent desperation of her father. Burned is the story of how life can be restored through the sheer force of will.