Black Saturday

One hundred and seventy-three people lost their lives in the Victorian bushfires of February 2009, the greatest number from any bushfire event in this nation's history. The memories and thoughts that Peg Fraser heard from the survivors complicate much of what we thought we knew about the experience of catastrophic natural events. Beginning each chapter with an object from the bushfires, Fraser reveals how each person's identity, including as a man or a woman with a particular social position in the town, impacted upon experiences and understandings of loss.