4 TRUE survival stories
Food investigation THE FATE OF FOOD
by Amanda Little,
Bloomsbury
This book is subtitled: “What We’ll Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World” and Little spent three years investigating how we will feed the world in the future. She visits everything from a remote control organic farm to famine-stricken Ethiopia, and finds out how food giants are producing specially sealed products for families in case of disaster. In Utah’s “pot pie room”, she sees huge machines pump out “a grayish blend of freeze-dried potato chunks, carrot, celery, onion, peas and whey protein” and imagines her children, grown-up, surviving underground on pouch meals.
Family memoir HER KIND OF LUCK
by Michelle Balogh,
Brio Books Balogh traces the life of her step-great-grandmother Shan-Yi, who died in 2012. After her death, Balogh, who had been suffering from depression, moves into Shan-Yi’s apartment, as she tries to get back on her feet. She discovers bookshelves containing silver, books hiding Scotch, as well as letters, papers and diaries. And so begins her journey to peel back the secrets of this bold and intriguing woman, who moved to America, aged four, ran away to Hong Kong at 16, then settled in Sydney at the start of World War II with her German husband. When he’s interned, Shan-Yi finds out who he really is.
Loss of a child ONCE MORE WE SAW STARS
by Jayson Greene, Hachette Greta Greene, inquisitive, radiant, the light of many lives, was just two years old, when a brick fell from an eighth-storey windowsill in New York and left her with a terrible head injury. Her father, Jayson, and mother
Stacy were faced with unimaginable grief, and only had a few hours to make the decision to donate her organs.
Later they discovered a building inspector warned of a problem with the building. This is a story of a young couple surviving a ghastly tragedy and doing their best to work through their grief together. It’s a memoir that will reach into your heart.
Hope and healing PROGNOSIS
by Sarah Vallance, NewSouth Books As a fearless child, Sarah Vallance would stomach skateboard down a steep hill from home to another suburb. On the day “death was stalking her” she nearly overturned friend Tim’s quad bike and then decided to ride his horse. She fell, her skull hit a rock “part crack, part slosh… my last thoughts with a healthy functioning brain.”
This is the story of her recovery from a brain injury that saw her IQ plummet and changed her personality. At first, she shuts herself away, but slowly her confidence rebuilds as she learns to read and write again, and starts to carve out a new, different life.