Salvation Creek : An Unexpected Life

A national bestseller and winner of the Neilsen BookData 2007 Booksellers Choice Award

'As I bumped across the water in a leaky tin dinghy I didn't know that the journey had begun. That the pale yellow house with a corridor of columns and long verandah on the high, rough hill would hold the key to it all'.

At 44 Susan Duncan appeared to have it all. Editor of two of Australia's top selling women's magazines, a happy marriage, a jetsetting lifestyle covering stories from New York to Greenland, rubbing shoulders with Hollywood royalty, the world was her oyster. But when her beloved husband and brother die within three days of each other, her glittering life shatters. In shock, she zips on her work face and soldiers on - until one morning eighteen months later when she simply can't get out of bed.

Heartbreaking, funny and searingly honest, SALVATION CREEK is the story of a woman who found the courage not only to walk away from a successful career and begin again, but to beat the odds in her own battle for survival and find a new life - and love - in a tiny waterside idyll cut off from the outside world. From the terrifying first step of quitting the job that had always anchored her to abandoning herself to a passionate affair that she knows will break her heart, Duncan never flinches from the truth or loses her wicked sense of humour. Even when she finds a paradise on earth only to discover that it may be too late. It's been said that the greatest risk in life is not to take a risk. Sometimes you have to risk everything to find the only thing you need.

Reviews

"It is Duncan's unflinching and meticulous depiction of what really happens when humans struggle with grief, illness and mortality that ultimately makes this book sing. her accounts of dogs, food, wildlife, friends, illness and death are evocative, honest and dryly funny, while her stories of the frail helping the frailer are gut-wrenchingly moving."
The Australian

"Told with humour, honesty and brilliance. Don't miss it."
Woman's Day

"Duncan is a vibrant writer who brings alive her surroundings with great gusto and beauty"
Sunday Telegraph 19/03/06

"Her honesty in the face of the difficult truths of death and the ordinary tasks or rebuilding her life makes Susan's story both gripping and moving"
Australian Good Taste April 2006