My Next Breath

by Jeremy Renner ★★★★☆

"I did not want to write this book. I did not want to relive moment by moment, word by word, the events of January 1, 2023. I did not want to recount the incident, and its violence, nor the ramifications on me and everyone around me that followed the life and death, the pain, the surgeries, the fear, the difficult recovery...I've come to understand the ripple effect this incident has had and continues to have, even as time has passed, because what happened did not just happen to me. So even though I'm not a writer, and I did not want to write this book, here it is."

On January 1, 2023, actor Jeremy Renner was working to plow snow from the long, steep

driveway of his Lake Tahoe home. Helping him to clear the snow was his nephew Alex, and they were using a large "Snowcat", a tractor with tracks and a large front plow purpose-built for the job at hand. Renner was driving the plow, while his nephew was working to unstick a pickup truck from a snowbank when disaster struck. Renner jumped out of the cab but forgot to engage the parking brake, and the snowcat started to slide down the mountain directly toward Alex and the pickup. There wasn't time for Alex to get out of the way, and so Renner acted on instinct. He attempted to jump over the track and into the cab to stop the machine...but he didn't make it.

An image of the scene of the accident in Lake Tahoe, including the Snowcat that ran over Renner.

Renner was thrown in front of the machine and then rolled over by the 14,000 pound vehicle. It broke at least 38 bones in his body, crushed his rib cage, dislodged his left eyeball from its orbital socket, and left him in extremely grave peril. But he survived to tell the tale—of that day, and of his recovery—in My Next Breath.

I listened to the audiobook, something I'd highly recommend if you choose to read it. It's narrated by Renner, which for a memoir such as this seems like the only choice. But the production of the book takes the story to an extra level, and includes both a prologue from Renner's daughter Ava, as well as much of the 20-minute 9-1-1 call spliced in among Renner's retelling of his "time on the ice", as he calls it: the 45+ minutes between the moment of the accident and the time that paramedics were finally able to reach him. Hearing the live third party reactions to the scene, not to mention Renner moaning in the background, significantly enhanced his harrowing retelling of that incident.

As Renner says at the start of the book, he's not a writer, and that sometimes shows through. There is a good amount of expository repetition—Renner explains a basic fact, and then explains the same thing a few paragraphs later. I suspect this is more of an editing issue than anything, but it also makes the story even more raw and authentic. This is clearly the actor, in his own words, recounting the most impactful moment of his life. He's honest about the pain and terror he knows he caused his family, as well as how bad of a patient he was while in recovery (he's stubborn, to say the least). But his stubborn determination likely played a large role in saving his life, as well as aiding in his recovery. As someone who has stared death in the face and emerged on the other side, he also goes through a reprioritization of his life, and there is as much emotional and spiritual healing as there is physical.

It's captivating and engrossing, albeit at times repetitive, and an interesting look behind the curtain at an event that would have killed the vast majority of people.