Blank Canvas: The Amazing Story of a Woman Who Awoke from a Coma to a Life She Couldn't Remember

by Marcy Gregg, Hannah Brencher (Foreword by)

Overview

When Marcy Gregg awoke from a coma, 13 years had vanished from her memory.
She was 30 years old; she thought she was still 17. She didn’t recognize the man who introduced himself as her husband. She stared at pictures of the three children they said were hers, trying desperately to remember them, but her mind was blank.

Terrified and confused, Marcy did the only thing she could think of: she faked it. She told the doctors she was starting to remember and bluffed her way through visits from friends and family. Against all odds, it worked: she was released to a home, family, and life she should have known intimately—but seemed to be a stranger’s. How was she going to pull off the biggest acting challenge imaginable—and would her memories ever return?

Ghost Boy meets What Alice Forgot in this amazing true story of a woman who lost herself and tried to fight her way back on her own—but who found unexpected beauty in hope, faith, and second chances.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781496450371
Publisher:	Tyndale House Publishers
Publication date:	05/24/2022
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	675,550
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

Table of Contents

Foreword ix

Prologue xi

Part 1 Faces I Once Knew

1 Out of Focus 3

2 Comfort and Confusion 11

3 A Mother of Three 19

4 A Song from Heaven 27

5 The Face in the Mirror 35

6 The Gift of Intuition 47

7 Anxious for Home 59

8 Auditions for Life 67

Part 2 The Scent of Memory

9 A Persuasion of Perfume 75

10 A Providential Neighbor 83

11 Off Course 95

12 Turning Up the Heat 105

13 A Beach Getaway 113

14 A Breath of Hope 117

Part 3 Drinking to Forget

15 Just Getting Through the Day 127

16 Christmas Cards 137

17 The DinnerParty 141

18 Grieving in a Bottle 149

19 Manageable 155

20 What Lies Ahead 163

Part 4 The Painting Underneath

21 Seeing with New Eyes 169

22 A Passion Renewed 175

23 Worlds of Color 183

24 Space to Grow 193

25 Layers of Meaning 201

Epilogue 209

Postscript 213

Afterword 221

Author's Note 225

Acknowledgments 227

About the Author 231

Editorial Reviews

02/21/2022

Gregg debuts with a disappointing memoir about how her faith helped her rebuild her life after a case of meningitis wiped 13 years from her memory. In 1990, 30-year-old Gregg woke up in a hospital with no recollection of her husband, her three children, or anything that had happened since she was 17. The author tells the story of her recovery, from the shock of realizing that her nine-year-old sister was actually preparing for college midterms, to her crash course in mothering three young children she did not remember having. Overwhelmed, she tried to hide the extent of her memory loss, pretending to recognize friends from church and bluffing her way through dinner recipes. She developed an alcohol addiction to cope and quit only after recommitting to God and becoming a painter. Gregg writes without much insight or reflection, making her remarkable story feel tame and characterized by the same quotidian concerns—burning the meatloaf, corralling one’s kids while grocery shopping—faced by those without memory loss. Oliver Sacks this is not, but Christian readers looking for an uplifting narrative will be moved by Gregg’s conviction in God’s plan. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly