Iron Heart: The True Story of How I Came Back from the Dead

On the way home from swim practice, eighteen-year-old athlete Brian Boyle’s future changed in an instant when a dump truck plowed into his Camaro. He was airlifted to a shock-trauma hospital. He had lost sixty percent of his blood, his heart had moved across his chest, and his organs and pelvis were pulverized. He was placed in a medically-induced coma. When Brian finally emerged from the coma two months later, he had no memory of the accident. He could see and hear, but not move or talk. Unable to communicate to his doctors, nurses, or frantic parents, he heard words like “vegetable” and “nursing home.” If he lived, doctors predicted he might not be able to walk again, and certainly not swim. Then, miraculously, Brian clawed his way back to the living. First blinking his eyelids, then squeezing a hand, then smiling, he gradually emerged from his locked-in state. The former swimmer and bodybuilder had lost one hundred pounds.
Iron Heart is the first-person account of his ordeal and his miraculous comeback. With enormous fortitude he learned to walk, then run, and eventually, to swim. With his dream of competing in the Ironman Triathlon spurring him on, Brian defied all odds, and three and a half years after his accident, crossed the finish line in Kona, Hawaii. Brian’s inspiring journey from coma to Kona is brought to life in his acclaimed memoir.

“It's not what people accumulate in material things that makes a nation great. Greatness comes from the good that free people do for others. On the long road back, Boyle vowed that he would give back.
” (USA Today)

“A zombie, a permanent nursing-home resident, a man bound to a bed. At least, that may have been Brian Boyle's fate had he accepted the prognosis of his doctors.
” (Men's Health)

“At times, Brian’s tale of survival sounds more improbable than possible.
” (ESPN The Magazine)

“Riveting....There is no better story than Brian Boyle’s.” (USA Triathlon Life Magazine)

Brian Boyle survived a near fatal car accident in 2004 and then went on to participate in dozens of triathlons and endurance events throughout the world. His memoir, Iron Heart, chronicles his road to recovery and journey into the sport of triathlon. He lives in Maryland.

Bill Katovsky, founder of Tri-Athlete Magazine, has completed the Hawaii Ironman twice and is coauthor of Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq, which won Harvard’s Goldsmith Book Prize; and editor of 1,001 Pearls of Runners' Wisdom: Advice and Inspiration for the Open Road, as well as co-founder of the Natural Running Center.