Description

At three years old, Carl Morris contracted bacterial meningitis. He fell into a five-day coma — and woke up profoundly deaf. He stopped speaking altogether, convinced it was pointless. A 1983 educational report predicted he would never read well or hold down a skilled job.

He proved it wrong in every way imaginable.

SOAR – Learning to Fly with a Broken Wing is the story of how a boy who lost his hearing and his voice found both again — through painstaking years of speech therapy, a mother who refused to give up, and a father who put a cue in his hands. It is the story of ‘Houdini’ Morris: the cocky kid who turned professional at seventeen, survived a terrifying night being forced to play pool for his life in a Johannesburg pool hall, and at twenty-one became the youngest-ever World 8-Ball Pool Champion — all while lip-reading his way through a world that rarely waited for him to catch up.

But this is more than a sports memoir. It is the story of a man who walked away from professional pool at the height of his powers to be a father, built a property business from nothing, and then — driven by something deeper than ambition — became the first deaf person to trek the last degree to the North Pole. Who has cycled the Namib Desert, trekked the Andes, and faced down High-Altitude Pulmonary Edema at Everest Base Camp. Who has raised over £1 million for deaf children and other causes close to his heart.

Written with raw honesty, self-deprecating humour, and hard-won wisdom, SOAR is a book about silence and noise, fear and acceptance, grief and gratitude — and the simple, stubborn belief that a life interrupted is not a life ended. For anyone who has ever been told what they can’t do, this is proof of what’s possible when you refuse to listen.