The Long Blink: The true story of trauma, forgiveness, and one man's fight for safer roads

by Brian Kuebler

Overview

THE LONG BLINK is a narrative nonfiction book by Emmy Award-winning journalist, Brian Kuebler, who exposes the staggering cost of the American trucking industry’s rising crash rate through the intimate struggle of Ed Slattery, who is left to piece his family back together after a trucker fell asleep at the wheel and killed his wife and maimed his son. From the historic, public settlement with the trucking company and a bizarre confrontation with its driver to one father’s ongoing and, more recently, frustrating fight on Capitol Hill for safer roads, the Slattery’s story is a revealing, emotional look at the rapidly growing danger we all face from the passing lane each and every day.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781941887042
Publisher:	Behler Publications, LLC
Publication date:	09/24/2019
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Brian Kuebler is an award winning investigative journalist for WMAR-TV in Baltimore, Maryland. Kuebler has been a television reporter for 18 years. He has written, published, and broadcast thousands of stories in his career and has risen to become a lead investigative reporter in one of the nation’s major media markets. Kuebler has won three Edward R. Murrow Awards, the world’s largest professional organization devoted to electronic journalism. One of Kuebler’s Murrow awards was for his coverage of the Slattery family trying to heal one year after the crash. The author is also an Emmy award winner. In 2011 Kuebler was recognized for telling the original story of Ed Slattery and his family. Kuebler received the Emmy for the best serious feature that year as he profiled the crash that killed Susan Slattery and explored how trucking regulations may have played a role. In addition to winning an Emmy in 2011, Kuebler has been nominated most every year for his work. He has been nominated in categories of writing, investigative journalism, serious feature and in light feature a total of 12 times in 8 years. Most recently the author was awarded best enterprise reporting by the Associated Press Broadcaster Association for his exclusive story featuring the first and only interview of an officer accused in the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore. Brian Kuebler is a graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park where he completed a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism. He also holds a Masters Degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri, Columbia. Kuebler has been a reporter in Idaho, Missouri, Memphis, Tennessee and Baltimore, Maryland. During his career he developed a hard news narrative style of storytelling that resonates with viewers and readers. Through every market he has worked, Kuebler has risen to be the lead reporter covering most of the large complex news stories, several of which have been of national interest through the years.

Read an Excerpt

As he punched in the Ohio area code everything began to start closing in, acutely unaware of the reality about to hit him while at the same time growing panicked with each number he pushed. He couldn’t help but think if he hit ‘send,’ he just might find fire near all this smoke. "This is Ed Slattery, I was told to call this number but I think this is a mistake," Ed meekly insisted. His assertion was perhaps the last punch hope could throw at this rapidly impending reality. "Mr. Slattery, this is Akron Children's Hospital," the nurse said in a tone suggesting she had been anticipating his call. Akron makes sense he thought, not Toledo, but it would be the very last thing that would make sense to Ed Slattery for the rest of his God given life. "I am sorry," the nurse continued, "your boys are here. They were in a very serious accident and you need to get here as soon as possible." Ed immediately fired off a short burst of questions, the ones as a parent he was innately prepared to ask, but the nurse couldn’t provide any answers. Finally, Ed asked the one question a father works his whole life to avoid. "Can you tell me if they are they alive?" "Yes, Mr. Slattery, they are alive. I can't really go into details, but their injuries are serious." "And my wife..." Ed's voice trailed as the remainder of his sentence got caught in his throat. "I have no information about your wife but let me give you some numbers of general hospitals in Akron." The nurse rattled off numbers and as Ed scribbled them down on yet another random piece of scrap paper he couldn’t help but think there is no order in these. There was no spreadsheet in the world that can make any sense of these numerals. Chaos, he feared, broke free from that basement. Ed started frantically dialing. “Ginger, the boys are at Akron Children’s. I need you to head there now please.” “Oh My God, what happened?” “Ginger I don’t know and I haven’t heard any news on Susan, but I need you to get to the boys.” Ed hung up his cell phone, picked up his office phone and dialed the first number the nurse gave him. It was Akron General Medical Center. “Hi, I am trying to find my wife. Do you have a Susan Slattery?” he asked. No record. Hope, it seemed, finally landed a jab. At an impasse, stuck somewhere between panic, horror and ignorance Ed felt powerless. He walked across the hallway and told his boss his family was in some kind of accident and he needed to leave. As Ed turned around to walk back to his desk he started noticing some of his co-workers milling around his office as if sensing a volatile disturbance unfolding in slow motion. Staring at their concerned faces and still not knowing what his next move really needed to be, his desk phone rang snapping him back into a reality where indecision was never to be a luxury again. “Is this Susan Slattery’s husband Ed Slattery?” the voice on the other end of the line asked. “Yes,” Ed offered abruptly. “This is Doctor Roger Marcial from the Portage County Coroner’s Office…” Before the doctor could finish the statement he had the dubious distinction of delivering hundreds of times in his career, Ed interrupted with a disconnected anger that can only be expressed by a man finally accepting hope just got knocked on its ass.