Lauren Manning at BookHampton

A standing-room only crowd of readers, friends and well-wishers turned out in Sag Harbor on September 4th for Lauren Manning's debut book signing for Unmeasured Strength, her memoir of healing from injuries sustained on 9/11.

If her name sounds familiar, it's because you heard of her ordeal recovering from being burned on over 80% of her body in her husband Greg Manning's 2002 New York Times best-selling book, Love, Greg & Lauren.

Lauren read from the first chapter of her book, which describes the impact and subsequent fireball that descended Tower One's elevator shaft and engulfed the buildings' lobby in flames. Breaking her ankle in escape, Lauren was able to make it to a patch of grass outside where passers-by helped put out the flames that covered her body.

Manning's message is simple: We choose to survive, we choose to fight. We choose not to let horrible events or people 'win' over us. Acknowledging that she could have given up, she recalls in the book that even in the midst of extraordinary pain, lying on the grass that blue-sky day she realized that she had had only a few months with her then-infant son Tyler, and wasn't ready to say good-bye to him yet. Her choice to hang on that day, while seeming simple, was huge and resonates today (Lauren & Greg have another young son, Jagger, aged two).

Signed copies of Unmeasured Strength are available at all three BookHampton stores, or online at bookhampton.com.