Here the people who loved her and knew her best tell the story not only of the 15 years Terri struggled to stay alive, but of a gentle child who brought happiness to everyone she touched. This is the story of a normal adolescent who blossomed into the beautiful young woman who captured Michael Schiavo's heart. And it is the inside story of their troubled relationship, for the members of Terri's family were witnesses to a growing tension, and were her confidants as she struggled in her marriage with the husband who would later crusade for her premature and unnecessary death.

A book that stakes clear moral ground without a political aim, A Life That Matters takes us inside Terri's family when the courts ordered her feeding tube removed, and it leads inexorably to a scene that will haunt readers forever: a bereft family barred by the police from their daughter's hospice room in the final moments of her life.