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Terri Schiavo's family announces book plans

Terri Schiavo's parents and siblings are writing a book about their struggle in the epic end-of-life case that divided the country and captured the attention of everyone from the Pope John Paul II to President Bush, their publisher said Tuesday.

The yet untitled memoir by parents Bob and Mary Schindler, brother Bobby Schindler and sister Suzanne Vitadamo will be published in March to coincide with the first anniversary of the death of the brain-damaged woman, whose feeding tube was removed after her husband won a court order to do so.

"This book is the moving story of an ordinary family caught up in extraordinary circumstances, and it will set the record straight for the first time," said Jamie Raab, senior vice president and publisher at Warner Books in New York.

The Schindlers' book is likely to compete for space on the shelves with a memoir by Terri Schiavo's husband, Michael, who fought his in-laws in court for eight years to end her life, arguing she would not have wanted to be kept alive in what doctors called a persistent vegetative state.

Michael Schiavo said he is collaborating on the book with author Michael Hirsh. The 280-page book is titled "Terri: the Truth," and is planned for release in March by Dutton Publishing.

The Schindlers will donate profits from the book to a foundation they established when they were fighting to save Terri's life, Warner Books said. The foundation now is dedicated to protecting severely disabled people.

The press release announcing the book said Terri Schiavo's parents and siblings "fought simply as a caring family and never the ideological zealots depicted by the mainstream media.

"For the first time ever, they will share their love and sorrow, joy and pain, and some shocking revelations as they honor Terri's life, mourn her death, and finally tell the whole story, the true story, of an innocent woman who met a needlessly premature death."

Terri Schiavo was 26 when she collapsed in her St. Petersburg apartment in 1990 and was left with irreversible brain damage. Her parents and siblings fought to keep her alive, contending that she had some level of consciousness and interacted with them when they visited.

Her collapse was for years attributed to an eating disorder, but medical examiners could not say for certain what caused it. But the autopsy supported Michael Schiavo's contention that she was in a persistent vegetative state with no consciousness and no hope of recovery.

Earlier this year, Mark Fuhrman, the former Los Angeles police investigator turned true-crime author, published a book about the case titled "Silent Witness: The Untold Story of Terri Schiavo's Death."

[Last modified September 27, 2005, 16:53:19]