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“IN AN INSTANT is a book for our time. Bob and Lee Woodruff give us a loving, terrifying, and ultimately inspirational tale of the perils of war, the demands of network journalism, and the strengths of a great marriage. We’re all the richer for their courage, their commitment to each other, and their willingness to share the many lessons of their ordeal.”
--Tom Brokaw
“Bob and Lee have written a stunning book. It’s the story of an anchor who has the curiosity and courage of a cub reporter. It’s also a passionate love story filled with hope for everyone who has ever wondered how you make it through another day. This is the kind of book you give your friends for their amazement . . . and for their lives.”
--Diane Sawyer
“What would you do in that instant if someone told you that was the last time you would hold or hug or talk to your husband for over a month; that he would lie in a coma-like state at times clinging to life. How would you act if you knew that he would spend the next year and beyond recovering from a traumatic brain injury, dealt by a roadside bomb powerful enough to blow open his head? What would I have changed about that morning if I knew that all our lives would be blackened, held to a flame and singed, torched with one single act of terrorism in a war?”
--Lee Woodruff from IN AN INSTANT
In one of the most anticipated books of 2007, Lee Woodruff, along with her husband Bob Woodruff, shares the couple’s never-before-told story of romance, resilience, and survival following the tragedy that transformed their lives and gripped a nation. In January 2006, the Woodruffs seemed to have it all – a happy marriage and four beautiful children. Lee was a public relations executive and Bob had just been named co-anchor of ABC’s World News Tonight. Then, while Bob was embedded with the military in Iraq, an improvised explosive device went off near the tank he was riding in. He and his cameraman, Doug Vogt, were hit, and Bob suffered a traumatic brain injury that nearly killed him.
IN AN INSTANT is the frank and compelling account of how Bob and Lee’s lives came together, we’re blown apart, and then were miraculously put together again—and how they persevered, with grit but also with humor through intense trauma and fear.
Here are Lee’s heartfelt memories of their courtship, their travels as Bob left a law practice behind, and pursued his news career and Lee her freelance business, the births of their children, and the challenges of parenthood.
Bob in turn recalls the moment he caught the journalism bug while covering Tiananmen Square for CBS News, his love of overseas assignments and his guilt about long separations from his family, and his pride at attaining the brass ring of television news—being chosen to fill the seat of the late Peter Jennings.
For the first time, the Woodruffs reveal the agonizing details of Bob’s terrible injuries and his remarkable recovery. We learn that Bob’s return home was not an end to the journey but the first step into a future he and Lee have learned not to fear but to be grateful for.
IN AN INSTANT is not only a dual memoir of love and courage. It is an important and inspiring guide to coping with tragedy—and an extraordinary drama of marriage, family, war, and nation.
About the Authors:
Lee and Bob Woodruff live in Westchester County, New York, with their four children. Bob Woodruff was named co-anchor of ABC’s World News Tonight in December 2005. On January 29, 2006, while reporting on U.S. and Iraqi security forces, Bob Woodruff was seriously injured by a roadside bomb that struck his vehicle near Taji, Iraq. Lee Woodruff is a public relations executive and freelance writer.
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