Shock waves: finding peace after the Bali bomb

You're young, in love, and in paradise surfing, traveling, partying. Then in one terrifying wave of heat and noise your reality shatters into a million pieces that can never be put back together. On October 12, 2002, a massive car bomb ripped through the popular Kuta nightclub, the Sari Club, killing 202 people and maiming many others. Hanabeth Luke was hamming it up on the dance floor to cheesy pop tunes with a friend when a loud bang, like a car back-firing, momentarily silenced the music and dimmed the lights. Dancers stopped and heads turned, but the music and flashing lights soon came back on and the party resumed. But only for a few seconds "The noise which came next I will never forget. It was an empty sound that did not resonate. It was a thud, like the slam of a car door, but multiplied to a volume I simply cannot describe," Hanabeth writes in this extraordinary memoir. Hanabeth survived the Bali Bomb, somehow crawling through the flaming wreckage and using fallen electrical cables to shimmy over a four metre high concrete wall. But her boyfriend Marc Gajardo was killed instantly in the blast. The heart-wrenching story of young love, and lives, cut short is chilling and confronting,. Her raw and honest account of those dreadful events brings the spectre of terrorism into sharp and intensely personal focus. Yet it is the story of what Hanabeth has done since which brings a spark of hope and light to this awful chapter in our history. Confronting world leaders, campaigning for peace and against the war on terror, raising money and awareness, resolving to squeeze the most from every day, Hanabeth's inspirational tale provides a stirring case study in survival and healing.