The Trauma Cleaner

By Sarah Krasnostein,

Book cover of The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman's Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay, and Disaster

Book description

Husband, father, drag queen, sex worker, wife. You've got to hear Sandra's incredible story.

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…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

1 author picked The Trauma Cleaner as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I read this book when I was in a slump whilst working on my own and it really inspired me.

The job depicted here is fascinating but the woman carrying it out is doubly so.

Sandra - originally a married with kids man called Peter, who had suffered violence as a child - has been a drag queen, a sex worker, undergone gender reassignment, and takes all of this suffering and rich experience into her work cleaning up death scenes and hoarder houses.

The latter involving working with the damaged living who are often resistant. The human side of her…

Want books like The Trauma Cleaner?

Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like The Trauma Cleaner.

Browse books like The Trauma Cleaner

Book cover of Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
Book cover of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Book cover of Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,187

readers submitted
so far, will you?

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in death, Australia, and presidential biography?

Death 392 books
Australia 334 books