We read in folk tales about elixirs that course through one’s body and effect transformations. Such elixirs exist to-day, one of them an antibiotic called gentamicin. Benign in its ability to hunt down and destroy pathogens, gentamicin in certain cases acts malignly to destroy the myriad hair follicles in the inner ear that enable us to stand upright, to place one foot in front of another. Those who suffer this toxic reaction are forever damaged, doomed to live in a shifting, visually unstable world, having to learn to walk again with a body that has lost its essential equilibrium, its inner steering device. A Life Unbalanced tells the story of a summer that became a season of change through a toxic response to gentamicin and the author’s struggle to reclaim a life in a body disabled by this modern elixir. “Jean Mallinson, in her wrenching, compelling account of her own disability, reminds us that we, all of us -- wherever our station, whatever our circumstances -- live an uncertain, a wobbly life. A lovely mix of personal thought and literary quotation, A Life Unbalanced is full of honest feeling and whirling reflection.“ Robert Hartwell Fiske, Editor, Vocabula Review. The Author... Anna Jean Mallinson is the author of a book of short stories, I Will Bring You Berries, a book of poems, Between Cup and Lip , and, with four other writers, a book of poems, Quintet: Themes & Variations. She is also the author of essays and articles, most recently in Vocabula Review. She lives in West Vancouver, B.C., Canada.