The Sun Farmer: The Story of a Shocking Accident, A Medical Miracle and a Family's Life and Death Decision

Ted Fink's wife heard the explosion from the living room, where she sat reading the day's mail and sipping iced tea. She ran to the front door and saw a massive curling fireball. Her husband was in the flames, she was certain. She called 911, asking for help at the farm.... So begins Michael McCarthy's extraordinary portrayal of a real-life nightmare: an Illinois corn farmer so badly burned in a tractor accident that only his feet, protected by his new steel-toe boots, escaped the flames. While he lay unconscious, his wife Rhoda, with no way of knowing how disabled or disfigured he would emerge from multiple surgeries, had to decide whether to allow doctors to enshroud him in a cocoon of artificial skin, or let him die. This rare and intimate story carries the reader through the Finks' agonizing experience as Ted is sedated into a coma for six months while Rhoda is left alone to contemplate this life-or-death decision.