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Research on recovering from unintended injury is dominated by the medical and psychological literature focussing on issues they deem important; return to work, functional recovery and psychological impacts of injury. My research explores from a sociological perspective, patients��� understanding and experiences of recovery after unintended injury., Employing an interpretative approach, 45 participants were qualitatively interviewed; 21 participants were men and 24 were women. The average age was 53 years and ranged from 18-70. Participants had experienced an injury requiring at least one night in hospital and were interviewed once between 1-14 months post injury., For participants, recovery meant ���getting back to normal��� and recovering certain ���key goals���. Participants were split into a heuristic typology according to their ���key goals��� of recovery; these were recovering a ���specific recreational activity���, recovering ���independence��� and ���recovering a whole life���. The social context of participants��� lives including gender, age, ageing, employment, living arrangements and their current life circumstances, shaped recovering the key goals., Before participants could achieve their ���key goal��� of recovery, they had to attain three prerequisites for recovery; specifically to restore limb function sufficiently to participate in certain key activities; to overcome the perceived fear/risk of reinjury/further injury, to recover the confidence to participate in certain activities; and to overcome a lack of trust in their injured limb to allow the performance of prior key activities. This took time to accomplish, and some participants were unable to achieve these prerequisites, thus they were unable to recover their key goal., Bury���s (1982) concept of ���biographical disruption��� was limited in its explanatory capacity but three further biographical impacts were identified; ���biographical interruption���, biographical threat��� and ���biographical redirection���. ���Biographical interruption��� and ���biographical threat��� were temporary, transitional states and ���biographical redirection��� (an acceptable new normal) and ���biographical disruption��� (an unacceptable new normal) were final outcome states.