Against Tall Odds: Being a David in a Goliath World

Matt Roloff, a highly-successful software and services developer and part-time real estate entrepreneur, started from a place that's hard to imagine even after you read his own account. As a diastrophic dwarf, Roloff spent a significant part of his early life in San Francisco's Shriner's Hospital. There, well-intentioned but ultimately ineffectual doctors subjected him to a battery of excruciating medical procedures designed to "straighten, twist and lengthen different parts of [his] body," and hospital staff enforced a strict visitation policy that limited family visits to 2 hours per week. During the long days and nights that he lay immobilized in a body cast, Roloff stared at the white ceiling tiles and dreamed. Later on, those dreams became the mainspring of an active, intriguing and inspiring life that revolves around his wife, their four young children, and their Disneyesque 35-acre farm/home that is the creative expression of his fertile mind.

Roloff's progression from the baby the doctors were afraid to tell his parents about to an accomplished, multi-talented adult is a fascinating and touching story, told against the background of an amazing family; of siblings whose physical infirmities and will to live rival his own; and of parents whose faith, humor, strength of character and unselfish love instilled in their children the curious notion--so evident throughout this book--that life is to be relished, not endured.

Against Tall Odds is an engaging book for readers of all ages. It should be required reading for every middle school student and is definitely a must-read for anyone who has ever excused himself for anything on the grounds that life isn't fair.