Author Description

Life in the Land of IS;the Amazing Story of Lani Deauville is a memoir of the woman who is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the World's Longest Living Quadriplegic. According to the author, Bette Lee Crosby -Lani Deauville is an absolutely amazing person. After spending 5 minutes with her, you forget that she is a quadriplegic. This woman has achieved more in her lifetime than many of us ever dream of doing. I am so honored to have been selected to write this incredible story. When Lani Deauville was seventeen, she fell victim to a diving accident that broke her neck, injured her spinal column, and left her a quadriplegic. That happened back in the 1950s, when it was believed that a person with such injuries was unlikely to live for days, and most certainly not for over fifty years. But Lani willed herself to live and she did. In the years that followed, Lani worked, paid her way through college and then through Graduate School. She became a Rehabilitation Therapist, worked for the Governor of Florida and was instrumental in the legislation that mandated all state-owned public buildings have handicapped access. She ultimately got married and, in her forties, adopted an infant and raised him. She also established her own health food supplement company and built it into what is now a thriving business.