Review of Long Goodbye: The Deaths of Nancy Cruzan, by William H. Colby

[Excerpt] Bill Colby is the lawyer who represented the family of Nancy Cruzan in one of the nation’s most important “right to die” cases. Ms. Cruzan was a twenty-five year old woman who, due to a car accident, was deprived of oxygen for a significant time and cast into a persistent vegetative state. Colby’s book, Long Goodbye: The Deaths of Nancy Cruzan, is a nonfiction account of his journey with the Cruzan’s family over the course of almost seven years. Along the way, Attorney Colby, who was just five years out of law school when he agreed to represent the Cruzans, gave the first oral argument of his career in the Missouri Supreme Court and his second in the U.S. Supreme Court. He battled with a series of heavyweights, including Ken Starr (of Clinton impeachment fame), then Missouri Governor and now U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, and William Webster. This book is anything but another self-absorbed story about a lawyer’s “big case.” It is a movingly written tale of a loving family faced with a tragedy, a clear and concise primer on complex “right to die” issues, and an inspirational tale about the way lawyers ought to relate to their clients