Writer Louise Krug reboots her life, rethinks her purpose

Life: rebooted

Louise: Amended

Louise Krug thought she’d have the perfect life. Krug, a pretty 22-year-old Kansas journalist prepping for a move to California with her handsome French boyfriend, found her world imploding after a ruptured cavernous angioma—a brain bleed, in layman’s terms—forces her to undergo an emergency craniotomy. What followed, as chronicled in Krug’s compelling memoir Louise: Amended (Black Balloon Publishing, $14), is the story of a woman who—even as she endured extensive rehabilitation for among other afflictions, double vision and facial paralysis—also faced an existence in which her usual crutch—physical beauty—had suddenly disappeared. Krug’s book is at once darkly funny and touching as she details what it was like to rely on others for what once seemed the simplest of tasks, all while trying to figure out the future.