Updated

Writer Richard Bach, author of the inspirational best-seller "Jonathan Livingston Seagull," is able to speak a few words and respond to commands as he remains hospitalized in intensive care more than a week after his small plane went down in Washington state.

The 76-year-old Bach continued to recover from head and shoulder injuries Sunday at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, but the healing process has been slow, his son said in an email to The Associated Press.

James Bach described his father as still in "sort of a daze" several days after the Aug. 31 accident in which his small plane flipped after hitting power lines on San Juan Island.

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