Contact: Robyn Williams, WinePress Publishing, 360-802-9758, robyn@winepresspublishing.com

SEATTLE, Feb. 13, 2013 /Christian Newswire/ -- There was no escape. On March 6, 2006, oil rig worker Billy "Jack" McDaniel stood in horror as the flames of an explosion whooshed 90 feet up to where he was perched.

"In seconds I had become a dead man," McDaniel explains. Five years later, after more than 100 surgeries, McDaniel and his wife A'Leta tell their story.

"Dead Man Breathing" begins at the moment the fire engulfed Billy Jack's body. "Muscle and skin and stuff, it was just flying off in chunks," he writes. He decided to jump and put himself out of his searing pain, but a coworker talked him out of doing that.

Meanwhile, A'Leta rushed to Louisiana State University Hospital. She found her husband on a stretcher in the hallway, no room assigned to him. A'Leta comments, "They hadn't put him in a 'real' room because he wasn't gonna be their patient for long. No sense having to clean and prep a room after he died."

A'Leta continues. "He was bandaged up so heavily that the only parts that were exposed were his eyeballs, his nose, and his mouth. . . .His tongue was so swollen that it was just hanging out. He couldn't put it back in. He did not even look like a human."

"Dead Man Breathing" alternates from Billy Jack's account to A'Leta's. She describes the faith they held onto during times of the depression severe burn survivors and their families often feel. She recalls he told her, "I want to die because I cannot take the pain any longer." But pain was not Jack's only challenge. He worried that their daughter Carney would be afraid of him.

A'Leta and Jack credit God, family, and friends for Jack's survival. These days Jack speaks to religious and secular groups. "I look like I'm hurting on the outside," he says. "But I know that maybe you are hurting on the inside. That's what God can fix. He is changing me every day and he can change and fix you."

For more information about Billy Jack or about "Dead Man Breathing," to request a review copy or to schedule an interview, please contact Robyn Williams by phone at 360-802-9758, by email at robyn@winepresspublishing.com, or by fax at 360-802-9992. To purchase a copy visit www.winepressbooks.com or call 877-421-7323.