Schiavo books coming

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — In a new book, the parents and siblings of Terri Schiavo say they often were bewildered by the epic legal battle waged over the severely brain-damaged woman.

The book, due out March 28, contains no bombshells but offers a glimpse of the private agony of the family members who were determined to stop Mrs. Schiavo’s husband, Michael Schiavo, from removing the feeding tube that kept her alive for 15 years.

“I felt I was living in a parallel world, where a different language — legalese — spoke a set of incomprehensible rules,” Mrs. Schiavo’s mother, Mary Schindler, says in “A Life That Matters: The Legacy of Terri Schiavo — A Lesson for Us All.” “I felt no connection to this world, yet knew that Terri’s fate would be decided by those rules, and not by anything that governed my world, where humanity has less to do with the law than with the heart.”

Mrs. Schiavo, 41, died March 31, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed under court order. Her parents’ efforts to keep her alive ultimately drew in Congress, the Supreme Court, the Vatican and the White House.

Mr. Schiavo recently remarried and is releasing his own book March 27.