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Books > Fiction > True stories > Endurance & survival
"I Am Nobody is an honest, tragic account of child sexual abuse and
a powerful resource for individuals struggling with recovery.
Gilhooly clearly highlights the shortcomings of the Canadian
justice system's approach; hopefully, one day, the punishment will
fit the crime." —Sheldon Kennedy, former NHL player and
author of Why I Didn't Say Anything In this raw, unflinching look
at how his dream of playing hockey was stolen from him by
charismatic hockey coach and sexual predator Graham James, Greg
Gilhooly describes in anguishing detail the mental torment he
suffered both during and long after the abuse and the terrible
reality behind the sanitized term "sexual assault." Although James
has been convicted of sexually assaulting some of his victims,
including Sheldon Kennedy and Theo Fleury, he neither confessed in
court nor was convicted of sexually assaulting many of his other
victims, including Gilhooly, depriving him of the judicial closure
he craved. Gilhooly also provides a valuable legal perspective-as
both a victim and a lawyer-missing from other such memoirs, and he
delivers a powerful indictment of a legal system that, he argues,
does not adequately deal with serial sexual child abuse or allocate
enough resources to the rehabilitation of the victim. Most
important, Gilhooly offers hope, affirmation, and inspiration for
those who have suffered abuse and for their loved ones.
In this riveting first-person account, former Olympian and
professional hockey player Eric LeMarque tells a harrowing tale of
survival-of how, with only a lightweight jacket and thin wool hat,
he survived eight days stranded in the frozen wilderness after a
snowboarding trip gone horribly wrong. Known by his National Guard
rescuers as "the Miracle Man," Eric recounts his rise to success
and fame as a hockey player and Olympian, his long and painful fall
due to crystal meth addiction, and his unbelievable ordeal in the
wilderness. In the end, a man whose life had been based on
athleticism would lose both his legs to frostbite and had to learn
to walk-and snowboard-again with prosthetics. He realized that he
couldn't come to terms with his drug addiction or learn to walk
again by himself. He had to depend on God for his strength. Now an
inspirational speaker committed to raising awareness for the
dangers of drugs and crystal meth, Eric, in 6 Below, confronts the
ultimate test of survival: what it takes to find your way out of
darkness, and-after so many lies-to tell the truth and, by the
grace and guidance of God, begin to live again.
Drift back in history to a time when the rivermen still plied their
trade throughout the northern rivers of British Coumbia.
Crooked River Rats tells the tales of the men and women who
traveled the river highways living and working in the wilderness.
Generations of trappers, hunters, big game guides and prospectors
depended on the riverboats for their supplies. Using brute strength
and strong will, these river pioneers endured much hardship as they
opened up the northern bush. Here are their stories.
The Girl Who Just Wanted To Be Loved is a heart wrenching true
story from foster mum and Sunday Times bestseller Angela Hart.
Eight-year-old Keeley looks like the sweetest little girl you could
wish to meet, but demons from the past make her behaviour far from
angelic. She takes foster carer Angela on a rocky and very
demanding emotional ride as she fights daily battles against her
deep-rooted psychological problems. Can the love and specialist
care Angela and husband Jonathan provide help Keeley triumph
against the odds? This is a true story that shares the tale of one
of the many children Angela has fostered over the years. Angela's
stories show the difference that quiet care, a watchful eye and
sympathetic ear can make to children who have had more difficult
upbringings than most.
A beautiful and heart-warming collection of stories, this landmark
publication tells, for the first time ever, the rich history of the
NHS through the ordinary people who have experienced it. Founded on
the concept of providing healthcare to rich and poor alike, the
National Health Service (NHS) has been at the heart of our everyday
experiences of life and death since 1948. From Joan Meredith, who
stood on street corners in the freezing winter to campaign for a
new health system, to one of the first patients diagnosed with
HIV/Aids, Jonathan Blake, and Klarissa Velasco, who comforted and
held the hands of people suffering from Covid-19, Our NHS follows
our health service from its conception to today, and tells the many
incredible stories that have happened throughout its lifetime.
Filled with tales of every part of life, this beautiful book tells,
for the first time ever, the moving history of our world-leading
health service through the voices of the patients, nurses, doctors,
porters and ordinary people who have turned it into the beating
heart of our country. It is a heart-warming account of an amazing
institution.
*For the bibliography mentioned in the book, click here. A Thousand
Miles of Dreams is an evocative and intimate biography of two
Chinese sisters who took very different paths in their quests to be
independent women. Ling Shuhao arrived in Cleveland in 1925 to
study medicine in the middle of a U.S. crackdown on Chinese
immigrant communities, and her effort to assimilate began. She
became an American named Amy, while her sister Ling Shuhua burst
onto the Beijing literary scene as a writer of short fiction.
Shuhua's tumultuous affair with Virginia Woolf's nephew during his
years in China eventually drew her into the orbit of the Bloomsbury
group. The sisters were Chinese "modern girls" who sought to forge
their own way in an era of social revolution that unsettled
relations between men and women and among nations. Daughters of an
imperial scholar-official and a concubine, they followed
trajectories unimaginable to their parents' generation. Biographer
Sasha Su-Ling Welland stumbled across their remarkable stories
while recording her grandmother's oral history. She discovered the
secret Amy had jealously hidden from family in the United States
her sister's fame as a Chinese woman writer as well as intriguing
discrepancies between the sisters' versions of the past. Shaped by
the social history of their day, the journeys of these
extraordinary women spanned the twentieth century and three
continents in a saga of East-West cultural exchange and personal
struggle. Visit the author's website for more information and
upcoming events. http: //www.sashawelland.com/index.html"
A young reader's edition of The Volunteer - Jack Fairweather's
Costa Book of the Year 2020. An extraordinary, eye-opening account
of the Holocaust. Occupied Warsaw, Summer 1940: Witold Pilecki, a
Polish underground operative, accepted a mission to uncover the
fate of thousands interned at a new concentration camp, report on
Nazi crimes, raise a secret army and stage an uprising. The name of
the camp - Auschwitz. Over the next two and half years, and under
the cruellest of conditions, Pilecki's underground sabotaged
facilities, assassinated Nazi officers and gathered evidence of
terrifying abuse and mass murder. But as he pieced together the
horrifying Nazi plans to exterminate Europe's Jews, Pilecki
realized he would have to risk his men, his life and his family to
warn the West before all was lost. To do so meant attempting the
impossible - but first he would have to escape from Auschwitz
itself... For children aged 12 and up. Written from exclusive
access to previously hidden diaries, family and camp survivor
accounts, and recently declassified files. Critically acclaimed and
award-winning journalist Jack Fairweather brilliantly portrays the
remarkable man who volunteered to face the unknown. This
extraordinary and eye-opening account of the Holocaust invites us
all to bear witness.
You've seen Manhunt, now read this powerful and personal account
from Milly Dowler's sister Gemma . . . 'My name is Gemma Dowler. On
21 March 2002, a serial killer named Levi Bellfield stole my sister
and sent our family to hell . . .' In My Sister Milly, Gemma Dowler
recounts the terrible day of Milly's disappearance, the suspicions
that fell on the family, the torture of encountering the murderer
in court, the fatal errors made by the police, how it very nearly
destroyed her family and how love and hope helped the family
survive. Everyone thinks they know the story of Milly Dowler, but
only one person knows the true pain of having lost her sister, and
how a family can rediscover hope to survive. ________________
'Compelling. An amazing book' Jeremy Vine, BBC Radio 2
'Heartbreaking' Daily Mail 'Tragic, poignant, full of emotional
memories' Daily Mirror
**THE TRUE STORY BEHIND THE CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED BBC DRAMA 'THREE
GIRLS' ** What do they find attractive about me? An underage girl
who just lies there, sobbing, looking up at them...as they come to
me one by one. This is the shocking true story of how a young girl
from Rochdale came to be Girl A - the key witness in the trial of
Britain's most notorious child sex ring. Girl A was just 14 when
she was groomed by a group of nine Asian men. After being lured
into their circle with free gifts, she was plied with alcohol and
systematically abused. She was just one of up to fifty girls to be
'passed around' by the gang. The girls were all under-16 and forced
to have sex with as many as twenty men in one night. When details
emerged a nation was outraged and asked how these sickening events
came to pass. And now, the girl at the very centre of the storm
reveals the heartbreaking truth.
An extraordinary story of courage and kindness and the ultimate
triumph of family over what, at times, seem like insurmountable
odds. 'Abdul is dignified, defiant even, but his poise is beginning
to wear thin in this place. He needs surgery for a chronic shoulder
injury sustained when he was hit by a car in Kabul. Like the others
in detention with him, he faces an uncertain fate, and years in
limbo. Most of the people in the centre have already had their
spirits broken.' When psychiatrist and mother of three Emma Adams
travels to Darwin as an observer of conditions for mothers and
babies in the immigration detention centres there, she expects the
trip to be confronting. What she doesn't expect is to return to
Canberra consumed by the idea that she must help a sixteen-year-old
unaccompanied Hazara boy from Afghanistan - Abdul. The premise was
simple: Wouldn't any teenage boy be better off staying with a
family rather than locked behind a wire fence? In this brutal and
bureaucratic system, freedom was a hopeless dream. Emma and Abdul's
connection, and her fight to get him out and provide him with an
Australian home, a family and a future, forms an important
testimony in Australia's appalling treatment of asylum seekers.
Their story is a beacon of hope and humanity.
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