by Sarah Krasnostein 336 pages
"Husband, father, drag queen, sex worker, wife. You've got to hear Sandra's incredible story."
This is definitely an interesting story. The author makes it clear at the beginning that although she is writing about Sandra's life, that Sandra doesn't have a good memory, so some of the details of her life aren't clear (or are missing entirely). The blurb about this book says "Sarah Krasnostein's The Trauma Cleaner is a love letter to an extraordinary ordinary life. In Sandra Pankhurst she discovered a woman capable of taking a lifetime of hostility and transphobic abuse and using it to care for some of society's most in-need people."
While parts of this book are hard to read, I still found it to be unlike any other biography I've read. Sandra has had a very difficult life and some of the details of her childhood and then what she needed to do to survive as an adult make for some pretty sad reading, it's clear that Sandra doesn't get bogged down in sadness. Instead, she is always looking forward, always looking to make the best of a situation. Her compassion towards her clients is truly remarkable --- I found myself thinking that it takes an extraordinary person to be a trauma cleaner. And by the way, "trauma" does sometimes mean cleaning after a death, but it can also mean cleaning for someone who is living in a hoarding situation.
Not a book for everyone, but definitely interesting.
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