When The Smoke Clears

The whole world held its breath as 2020 dawned and Australia was on fire.

In When The Smoke Clears: Surviving the Australian bushfires, author Chrissy Guinery (Falling Up Stairs, Room to Breathe) takes us inside the smoke-drenched landscape of the South Coast as over three months she and her family are evacuated numerous times, separated by raging fires and ultimately, her daughter's home is lost among the hundreds destroyed on New Year's Eve in the Bateman's Bay region.

While people across Australia and around the world watched on through media reports, few can comprehend the length and extent of fire terror experienced not only by the people of South Coast communities, but in other fire ravaged regions across the nation.

'My middle-daughter's house is burning down and I've lost contact with my eldest daughter as the fire front threatens her home. It's the last day of 2019 and it feels like the end of the world.'

So begins this fast-paced, personal and grassroots account of living through a torturous fire season and finding a way to push through to recovery.

And while the eyewitness accounts of being caught in a bushfire emergency are remarkable, so too are the insights, advice and lessons learned about what it will take to recover, including from a range of experts.

A Postscript to the book describes the way fire victims have barely had the chance to breath clean air, before another emergency has come to shake their world.

'This is a story of resilience and hope', Chrissy says, 'but it begins by bringing the reader into the reality of being surrounded by out of control bushfires for three months, and ends with a plea not to forget those who are still a long way from recovery.'

A percentage of sales goes to bushfire recovery on the NSW South Coast.

Dettagli