At first, it seemed as if nobody wanted the book that CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier was trying to write about her life and near-death experience in Iraq.
One publisher wanted her to tell the story "through an intellectual feminist prism."
Another urged her to make her account "less medical."
A third thought her take on events was "too raw and emotional."
But after a while, the 41-year-old graduate of Maryland's St. Timothy's School came to understand that the problem wasn't so much a matter of style or tone. There was a more fundamental economic explanation for the publishing world's reluctance to embrace her story.
"The reason I almost didn't find a publisher was because books on Iraq don't sell. Over and over, when I was shopping it around, editors would say, `Gee, it's about Iraq.'" Dozier recalls, mimicking the higher-pitched false voice of someone trying to hide disappointment.
"But you know what, I had to admit that when we put Iraq on TV, people are changing the channel. ... Every chance we get, it seems like we turn away from Iraq. It's like you have to find some way to draw people in to listen to the story of that war."
Ultimately, Dozier found such a way. She also found a publisher in Meredith Books of Des Moines, Iowa.
What readers will find is a gripping saga of Dozier's physical devastation on a Baghdad street and her long, hard road of recovery in military and civilian hospitals and rehab centers in Germany, Washington and Baltimore, where her parents live. An intensely personal story, Breathing the Fire also manages as well as any book yet out on the war in Iraq to communicate universal truths about what it takes to survive and go on with life after being grievously wounded - whether journalist, civilian or soldier.
In her words
Dozier's harrowing tale opens late on May 28, 2006 - the eve of the day on which the veteran Middle East correspondent was wounded by a car bomb while reporting a story on how troops were spending Memorial Day in Baghdad. The blast killed two of her CBS colleagues, cameraman Paul Douglas and soundman James Brolan, as well as Army Capt. James A. Funkhouser. It left Dozier with shrapnel in her brain, two shattered femurs and less than half of the blood she had in her body before the bomb detonated.
"I hate these nights," she writes on the first page of the book. "Stare at the ceiling, turn left. Turn right. Can't sleep. Dread tomorrow's assignment, as usual."
