The Bullet Meant for Me
285 pages, 6 x 9
Paperback
Release Date:01 Sep 2005
ISBN:9780292709737
On April 20, 1998, Jan Reid was shot during a robbery in Mexico City, where he had gone to watch his friend, the boxer Jesus Chavez, fight. In The Bullet Meant for Me, Reid powerfully recounts his ordeal, the long chain of life events that brought him to that fateful attack, and his struggle to regain the ability to walk and to be a full partner in a deeply satisfying marriage. Re-examining the whole trajectory of his life, Reid questions how much the Texan ideal of manhood shaped his identity, including his love for boxing and participation in the sport. He meditates on male friendship as he tells the story of his close relationship with Chavez, whose career and personal travails Reid details with empathy and insight. And he describes his long months in physical therapy, during which he drew on the unwavering love of his wife and daughter, as well as the courage and strength he had learned from boxing, to heal his body and spirit. A moving, intimate portrait of a man, a friendship, and a marriage, The Bullet Meant for Me is Jan Reid's most personal book.
Simultaneously haunting and heartwarming, this memoir brings the horror of random (or almost random) violence fully to life and demonstrates how one man used that experience as a stepping-stone toward his own intellectual enlightenment.
Reid has written a striking, intensely personal, and emotionally honest record of his life.
There's a wealth of strong imagery in this memoir, but what truly generates its power is the magnetism of decency that allows the writer, and vicariously the reader, to rise beyond fear and the chaos of rage.
How rare they seem in the world, these too-few stories of redemption and dignity. The Bullet Meant for Me is alternately nightmarish and light-filled, and impossible to turn away from.
Jan Reid's memoir is a powerful story of love, loss, and one kind of redemption. Living to tell such a tale is an accomplishment in itself, but it takes an even greater talent to write it so beautifully.
This is an honest, enthralling memoir that hits with the impact of a bullet in the gut. Reading it will force you to reevaluate many things you take for granted.
Jan Reid (1945–2020) wrote for Texas Monthly, Esquire, GQ, Slate, Men’s Journal, Garden & Gun, the New York Times, and many other publications. His books include The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock, The Bullet Meant for Me, Rio Grande, Texas Tornado: The Times and Music of Doug Sahm, and two award-winning novels, Deerinwater and Comanche Sundown.
ProloguePart OnePart TwoEpiloguePostscript: A Toast
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