CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) -- As the oxygen canister spewed flames and smoke filled the Mir space station, astronaut Jerry Linenger realized he might die. So he said silent goodbyes to his pregnant wife and son.

Then regret hit him. He hadn't written to his boy about his hopes -- "or even a simple thing like 'I love you."'

Once the fire was out, Linenger's e-mails to his one-year-old son became more heartfelt. Three years, and two more sons later, Linenger is still writing about his Mir experience. Only this time, his frank account is Off the Planet: Surviving Five Perilous Months Aboard the Space Station Mir, a book released by McGraw-Hill in February.

What dad did was battle the worst fire in space and help keep the Russian station going in 1997, despite electrical blackouts, insufferable heat, leaking antifreeze fumes and rising carbon-dioxide levels.

He was the fourth of seven Americans to live on Mir, the third of the bunch to quit NASA, and the first -- and only one so far -- to write a book.

The 45-year-old retired Navy doctor began writing in early 1998, soon after leaving NASA. It took him one year to write it, and another to sharpen it with editors' help.

Linenger wrote without notes, relying almost entirely on the images and sensations seared into his mind during his 132-day Mir mission. He included everything, no matter how controversial.

"I wrote as honestly as I could," he says. "It's incredible drama -- and I don't apologize for that."

More importantly, Linenger wrote without a co-author. He did not want to be misquoted or misrepresented and so chose to go it alone, even though his writing experience was limited to medical journal articles and, of course, e-mail letters from Mir.

"I wanted it to be very personal: what it feels like to be out there in space, what it feels like to be cut off, live in isolation -- all the human frailties that I had to deal with within myself," he says.

"I politely said 'No thank you' to the ghost writers. I thought to myself, 'I'm in a little town, what better thing to do than to sit back and write my own version of what it felt like to be a spaceman."'

That small town is Suttons Bay on Lake Michigan's northern shores -- the perfect place for a Michigan-born triathlete and sportsman. From there, Linenger travels around the country giving motivational speeches to businesses.

In Off the Planet, he masterfully describes Mir's 14-minute blaze on February 23, 1997. Caused by a defective oxygen-generating canister, it was downplayed by Russian space officials. He also details the close call two months later with a supply ship that went out of control and barely missed ramming the station. A repeat of this docking test, after Linenger was gone, resulted in a near-catastrophic collision.

But it's the day-to-day struggles of training in Russia and living on Mir that yield some of Linenger's most interesting and revealing vignettes.

He frets about his family's safety following the theft of two NASA vans, and the break-in at a fellow astronaut's apartment at Star City, Russia. He writes:

"Since NASA management seemed more concerned with hushing up any negative news in our Russian partnership than addressing the issue, I let the word leak into the rumor mill -- a rumor from Russia could somehow reach America faster than I could find a working telephone -- that I desired a permit to keep a weapon in my apartment. Even though I did not own a gun, I thought the ploy would get someone's attention."

"Security alarms were wired into our duplex the next week."

Linenger says NASA managers made Americans at Star City feel abandoned. "No one, not even our guys, seemed to want to make our training or living conditions any better," he writes.

Among difficulties endured at Star City: relying on outdated diagrams of Mir, undergoing rigorous fitness tests while Russian cosmonauts sat in the sauna drinking vodka with colonels, and girding for emergency bailout with untested shark repellent.

"No, it does not do a bit of good," a Russian diver confided to a dismayed Linenger. "In fact, the sharks might even be attracted to the color for all we know." Then why bother? -- To calm foundering cosmonauts.

Among difficulties endured at Mir: being lied to by Russian flight controllers, having Russian psychologists depict him and his collegial Russian commander as "nearly homicidal enemies," and having to hide broken-down machinery before shuttle astronauts arrived with his replacement.

With the astronauts' arrival and ensuing press conferences, "appearances counted for everything," Linenger writes.

Equipment breakdowns reminded him of just how fragile and critically ill the space station was -- "not unlike the triple-gunshot patients that I used to treat in the ER at Detroit General Hospital." He knew he had to stay calm in order to avoid making mistakes that might be irreversible.

In retrospect, Linenger wishes he'd made more of a fuss -- before, during and after his mission -- in hopes of making life easier for the NASA astronauts currently training at Star City for the International Space Station.

He takes that hesitation personally. "I don't think things that I identified as being problems were ever corrected," he says, "and I probably should have been even more of a thorn in people's sides."