Louise: Amended
A beautiful young woman from Kansas is about to embark on the life of her dreams—California! Glossy journalism! French boyfriend!—only to suffer a brain bleed that collapses the right side of her body, leaving her with double vision, facial paralysis, and a dragging foot. An unflinching, wise, and darkly funny portrait of sudden disability and painstaking recovery, the memoir presents not only Louise’s perspective, but also the reaction of her loved ones—we see, in fictional interludes, what it must have been like for Louise’s boyfriend to bathe her, or for her mother to apply lipstick to her nearly immobile mouth. Challenging the notion that one person’s tragedy is a single person’s story, Louise: Amended depicts a dismantling—and rebirth—of an entire family.
Praise for Louise: Amended
“A massive brain trauma robbed fashionable young Louise of the shallow currency she’d banked on all her life, and the resulting struggle is a page-turner in which a person’s very soul deepens before your eyes. Louise: Amended rewards a reader’s time—a must read.” —Mary Karr
“Krug, who is 29 now — and married with a new baby — didn’t consult her ex-boyfriend about his feelings at the time. But if the adoption of his voice seems unfair at first, it grows apparent that Krug isn’t taking aim at Claude or anyone else. Louise is the target.” —Kansas City Star
Tilted
When she was 22, Louise Krug had brain surgery that saved her life but left her with physical impairments. Now, ten years later and embarking on marriage, motherhood, and a college teaching career, she still struggles with knowing how to live. In her startling and hilarious memoir, TILTED: THE POST-BRAIN SURGERY JOURNALS, Krug uses the third person to explore driving to hearing aids, neighbors and mom-friends. With both deadpan humor and keen introspection, Krug examines the micro and macro challenges of living a tilted life. Simple acts like posing for photographs, riding a bicycle, and even haircuts are suddenly major hurdles. But so are more complex issues like the relationship with her mother and parenting. Krug gives readers a ringside seat as she grapples with her increasingly complicated self-image. A story of dealing with her demons and learning about inner strength, Tilted teaches us that, ultimately, your opinion of yourself is the one that matters most.
Winner of the Kansas Book Award
Praise for Tilted
“Krug has a distance in her skillfully wrought third person voice, a voice gently laced with irony for her predicament, never once self pitying. She offers us a measured assessment of the mundane, the life stories we all experience– ex-boyfriends, worrying about wedding photos, family vacations, getting enough exercise– viewed through a lens a bit skewed, yet a bit clearer for her even tone and deft storytelling, a peek into the mystery of our physiological humanness.” ~ Nina Gaby APRN-PMH, writer, visual artist and psychiatric nurse practitioner, editor of Dumped: Stories of Women Unfriending Women.
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Louise Krug 