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• A poignant and powerful celebration of one remarkable woman’s unrelenting drive to make order from chaos • The Trauma Cleaner documents the transformative life of Sandra Pankhurst: raised in a working-class suburb of Melbourne as the abused adopted son of a Catholic family; now the owner of a highly successful trauma cleaning business • From an early marriage, fatherhood and divorce, to living full-time as a woman, Sandra has been through a lot: as a transgender sex worker she successfully prosecuted a violent rape through the courts in the early 1980s, she worked in the drag clubs of St Kilda and the brothels of Kalgoorlie, and came back to become Victoria's first female funeral director. Later she was a Brighton housewife, before she lost it all and turned her life around once again • The book is also an absorbing work of journalism as Sarah observes Sandra's work cleaning up after scenes of death, destruction and squalor • In both these stories and in Sandra's own life story, The Trauma Cleaner is about belonging and the universal struggle we all face in finding our place in the world • Writing with great warmth and devotion, Krasnostein has crafted an utterly compelling portrait of Sandra Pankhurst and a fascinating snapshot of the little-seen and oft-overlooked corners of Australian society • Sarah Krasnostein is a lawyer and is married to prominent Australian TV personality Charlie Pickering • This memorable, uplifting work of biography will be the subject of a strong publicity and marketing campaign from Text