Under Her Skin

The remarkable story of Professor Fiona Wood, AM, one of Australia's most innovative and respected surgeons and world leading burns specialist whose ground-breaking research and technology development has changed the lives of burn patients.

When three bombs tore out the heart of Bali and decimated so many Australian lives in 2002, burns surgeon Professor Fiona Wood led her team to save twenty-eight survivors with up to ninety-two per cent body burns.

A pioneer in the field of burns and reconstructive surgery, she made world headlines with the use of her ground-breaking invention of 'spray-on skin' to help minimise her patients' horrific scars.

Fiona was later made Australian of the Year, was voted Australia's Most Trusted Person for an unprecedented six years' running in the annual Reader's Digest poll and has been acclaimed as an 'Australian Living Treasure'.

This is now the story of her extraordinary life, from the daughter of a fifth-generation coal-mining family in the north of England to becoming one of Australia's most innovative, respected and dedicated surgeons and researchers. She talks candidly of the moving valour of her burns patients, the heartbreak, the triumph, the tears and the controversies that have stalked her stellar career.

As co-founder of the Fiona Wood Foundation, she conducts vital research into all aspects of the survival of burns victims, with findings and breakthroughs that have had an impact on treatment around the globe., while she is also director of the Burns Service of Western Australia, a consultant plastic surgeon at Fiona Stanley Hospital and Perth Children's Hospital and Winthrop professor in the School of Surgery at The University of Western Australia.

Remarkably she has achieved all of this while raising six children.

In Under Her Skin, Sue Williams, a best-selling author and award-winning journalist who has written a number of best-selling biographies, most notably about Father Chris Riley, Father Bob Maguire, and Dr Catherine Hamlin, presents a searingly honest, no-holds-barred account of all aspects of Fiona Wood's remarkable life.

About the Author

Sue Williams is an award-winning journalist, travel writer and best-selling author. She has developed a writing style that tells a story as evocatively as possible, with a keen eye for detail.

She's now written 26 books, mostly non-fiction.

Sue's previous biographies include Mean Streets, Kind Heart: The Father Chris Riley Story; Father Bob: The larrikin priest; The Last Showman: Fred Brophy; No Time For Fear: Paul de Gelder; Peter Ryan: The inside story; Death of a Doctor; The Girl Who Climbed Everest, Healing Lives, Daughter of the River Country and a number of books about outback characters.

Other books are about travel, true crime and genetics, while she has also had a children's book published and an historical novel based on the early colonial days of Australia, Elizabeth & Elizabeth.

Her book Healing Lives, about acclaimed obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr Catherine Hamlin and the patient whose life she saved, Mamitu Gashe, who's now become one of the world's leading fistula surgeons herself, was shortlisted for the Australian Christian Book of the Year in 2021.