📱 One Simple Text: A Mother’s Grief, Guilt, and Unyielding Resolve
When Betty Shaw’s daughter, Elizabeth Marks, distracted by a text message, was hit by a truck, the world tilted. The crash shattered bones, fractured her skull, and left her fighting for life. Brain surgery. Facial reconstruction. A long, uncertain road back. A potential modeling career derailed.
But the heartbreak ran deeper. Elizabeth had been answering a text from her mother when the car struck her. That detail added a layer of guilt to Betty’s grief — a cruel twist that could have silenced her. Instead, it fueled her.
One Simple Text… isn’t just a book. It’s a reckoning. A warning. A lifeline. Betty didn’t write it to wallow — she wrote it to wake people up. Her daughter’s story became a movement: more than a million views on social media, an invitation to the Oprah Winfrey Show, and a ripple effect that continues to save lives.
This is what maternal resilience looks like: not just surviving the unimaginable, but transforming it into testimony. Betty Shaw turned guilt into advocacy. Pain into purpose. She didn’t just endure — she fought back with words, with truth, with love.
Because one simple text can destroy a life.
And one fierce mother can help save thousands.
One Simple Text . . ., written together with Dave Bown, is available in paperback, ebook and audiobook editions.
Book description:
It was every parent's worst nightmare. On a sun-drenched morning in April 2012, a Maryland state trooper knocked on Betty Shaw's front door and delivered the grim news that her 17-year-old daughter, Liz, had been involved in a horrible car accident and was clinging to life.
Liz recovered from her life-threatening injuries but suffered severe and permanent effects from the accident. Texting while driving caused Liz's crash, and she and her mother went on a mission to educate people about the perils of distracted driving. The pair began to speak before various groups, and as their popularity grew, they launched a video about Liz's story which went viral, spawning magazine and online articles, as well as several TV appearances, including one on Oprah Winfrey's Where Are They Now? show.
In One Simple Text, Betty Shaw recounts her daughter's frightening and arduous but ultimately uplifting and inspirational journey. Betty chronicles Liz's ordeal from the day of the accident and provides a glimpse of their life on the speaking and television circuit. This is a poignant memoir about a young woman who triumphed over tragedy; a mother and daughter's love; and the indomitable power of the human spirit.
Hollywood Book Festival Honorable Mention
Kops-Fetherling International Book Awards: Legacy Award for
Inspiration/Motivation
story told on the Oprah Winfrey Show
For more posts about Betty and Dave and their book, click HERE.
Click for more stories about going from tragedy to triumph and overcoming the odds.
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Follow MSI Press on Twitter, Face Book, and Instagram.
Interested in publishing with MSI Press LLC?
Check out information on how to submit a proposal.
Planning on self-publishing and don't know where to start? Our author au pair services will mentor you through the process.
Julia Aziz, signing her book, Lessons of Labor, at an event at Book People in Austin, Texas.
Want to communicate with one of our authors? You can! Find their contact information on our Authors' Pages.
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