AustLit

'Currowan is the gripping account of the massive fire that engulfed the south coast of New South Wales in 2019–20. Ignited by a lightning strike near the Currowan state forest and burning for seventy-four days across nearly 500,000 hectares, it was among the largest and most ferocious infernos of Australia’s Black Summer.

'Journalist Bronwyn Adcock fled the fire with her children. Her husband, fighting at the front, rang with a plea for help before his phone went dead, leaving her to fear: will he make it out alive? In Currowan, Bronwyn tells her story, and those of many others: what they experienced, saw, thought and felt. The pacy, immersive reportage is braided with much larger themes – what we know about how fire behaves, how that is changing due to climate change, and how communities can cope with natural disaster and prepare themselves for an increasingly dangerous future.

'Currowan is about tragedy, survival and the power of community. It is the story of a fire, and of a nation in the grip of an intensifying crisis we must all work together to solve.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'In this wise and layered book, Leigh talks intimately with people who’ve faced the unimaginable, from terrorism to natural disaster to simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Expecting broken lives, she instead finds strength, hope, even humour. Leigh brilliantly condenses the cutting-edge research on the way the human brain processes fear and grief, and poses the questions we too often ignore out of awkwardness. Along the way, she offers an unguarded account of her own challenges and what she’s learned about coping with life’s unexpected blows.

'Warm, candid and empathetic, this book is about what happens when ordinary people, on ordinary days, are forced to suddenly find the resilience most of us don’t know we have.' (Publisher's website)