Have you survived the impossible? A freak accident, a near-death experience, a danger, or a diagnosis you didn’t expect to see the other side of? So many people experience the unimaginable and continue to go on living — but not without being forever changed by what they’ve survived.
In these six memoirs, everyday people recount stories of their brushes with death, danger, and the aftermath. Forever changed by traumatic events, these individuals have emerged with a new outlook on life, appreciation for the people who helped them, a newfound strength and an overwhelming joy for being alive.
I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O'Farrell
The bestselling author of Hamnet recounts over a dozen encounters with death, encounters she never expected to survive — but miraculously did. From childhood illness to a dangerous stranger on a hiking trail, to car accidents, robberies, and brushes with illness and death of loved ones, this author has experienced some very low lows.
Through it all, she has gained a renewed lens through which to look at her life — as something full of beauty, wonder and surprise. As her daughter faces a daily struggle with a deadly condition, Maggie O’Farrell must remain resilient and attentive, determined to keep on living in the face of all she has survived, despite the fear she feels on behalf of those she loves.
Hard Bargain: What Life-Altering Experiences Taught Me About Faith, Friendship, and Family by Donald G. Denihan with Jon Land
For Donald Denihan, it was supposed to be the fishing trip of a lifetime. Instead, it ended up nearly costing him his life in a hard bargain he made with the sea. The book is best described as part gripping true adventure story and part self-reflection on how being on the doorstep of death helped him get a better grasp on what is really important in life.
Near-death experiences were nothing new to this successful real estate entrepreneur, though. At the age of 16, a hunting accident had nearly cost him his foot. Then at the age of 35, he was struck by the same aggressive form of prostate cancer that had killed his father. A decade later, one ill-fated boat trip confronted him with his own mortality yet again.
Through a long night of pounding rain and storm-swept winds, Donald faced off against everything the sea could throw at him. With the odds of survival dimming by the moment, his desperate efforts at sea were mirrored on land by the resourcefulness of friends and family who stop at nothing to save him before it’s too late.
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In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife by Sebastian Junger
This story might not be about surviving the wild, a natural disaster, or a dangerous attack — but it is about surviving, despite the odds, and how that changes a person. Life as a war reporter brought Sebastian Junger close to death several times. But it wasn’t until one summer day in 2020 when severe pain sent him towards death, that he was visited by his late father, who invited Junger to join him in death.
An aneurysm that should have killed Junger instead sent him on a philosophical and scientific journey to examine life — and what comes after. Diving into the personal and mystical, Junger explores what it meant to have a life-changing brush with death, how it shaped his views of spirituality, and what might lie beyond in the great unknown.
A Long Walk Home by Judith Tebbutt
An African safari in 2011 started a wonderful trip for Judith Tebbutt and her husband David, but at a beach resort forty kilometers south of Somalia, life took a turn for the worse. On one September morning, a band of armed pirates tore the couple’s lives apart. Judith was kidnapped and taken to a village in Somalia, where she was held hostage in a small and overheated room, with little access to food or cleanliness.
With a ransom on her head, Judith’s only hope of escape rested on her son. Judith lived to tell the tale of the physical and mental strength it took to survive inhumane conditions over the course of several months. With strength and resilience, she shares her story and the way her life was forever changed.
The Mourner's Bestiary by Eiren Caffall
Environmental research meets the personal journey of generational healing, grief, and chronic illness. What is it like to have your bloodline, species or lineage put in danger? At 22, Eiren Caffall was diagnosed with chronic and incurable polycystic kidney disease, which killed a majority of her family before they reached the age of 50.
It took courage and hope to have a child — a complicated decision that is explored in her insightful and deeply researched literary memoir. Paralleling her own life and illness with collapsing ecosystems of marine life and endangered creatures like rock barnacles and humpback whales, Caffall looks into the nuances of individual human survival and the survival of our planet as a whole.
Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home by Nando Parrado
Very, very rarely is there a survivor in a plane crash, never mind multiple survivors. This is the story of Nando Parrado, one of the 16 survivors of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571. The plane was chartered by a rugby team en route to Santiago, Chile, for a game when the pilot mistook his descent and crashed into the Andes mountains. While there were many survivors initially, the group was stranded on a glacier at nearly 12,000 feet above sea level with almost no supplies and no means of summoning help.
Over the course of the next 72 days, many would succumb to their injuries and freezing temperatures — and a handful of others, lead by Parrado, would muster the courage to trek 45 miles over the frozen mountain for help. It’s an incredible story of miracles mixed with tragedy, but most of all, the human will to survive.
Check out these other aviation-themed survival stories.
