Hours after the 2011 Christchuch Earthquake, Kaikoura-based doctor Chris
Henry crawled through the burning CTV building to rescue those who were trapped.
Six years later, his daughter Chessie interviews him in an attempt to understand
the trauma that led her father to burnout, in the process unravelling stories
and memories from her own remarkable family history. Chessie rebuilds her
family's lives on the page, from her parents' honeymoon across Africa, to
living in Tokelau as one of five children under ten before returning to New
Zealand, where her mother would set her heart and home in the Clarence Valley
only to see it devastated in the 2016 Kaikoura Earthquake, and the family
displaced. Written with the same love and compassion that defines her
family's courage and strength, We Can Make a Life is an extraordinary memoir
about the psychological cost of heroism, home and belonging, and how a family
made a life together. I'd always felt that I was emotional because I had been
raised by emotional people: talking right from the beginning, unafraid of tears
or love or closeness. Was it entrenched in us, to feel things too much? Would we
have to fight it away – the black shape at the edges, bounding after us, a
smudge of darkness in an otherwise colourful scene.
Author Biography
Chessie Henry was born in 1992 and grew up in Christchurch and Kaikoura. Her
personal essays have been published in The Spinoff and The Wireless, and she
currently works as a freelance copywriter. She first studied writing at Massey
University, and went on to gain her Master's in Creative Writing from Victoria
University's International Institute of Modern Letters. We Can Make a Life is
her first book.