A Life Not with Standing chronicles the adventures-by turns exhilarating, agonizing and amorous-of an iron lung alumna. It shatters stereotypes about people with disabilities, enabling others to view disability with pride, not prejudice. It celebrates family, faith, music, tenacity, idealism and indignation.

But most of all, A Life Not with Standing tells a story beyond Chava Willig Levy's polio chronicle: how calamities can befall innocent people and how those calamities can evolve into and, in fact, become ingredients of and prerequisites for ensuing joy.