The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein

The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein ISBN-13: 9781250101204 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: St. Martin's Press Released: April 10, 2018

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from NetGalley:
Before she was a trauma cleaner, Sandra Pankhurst was many things: husband and father, drag queen, gender reassignment patient, sex worker, small businesswoman, trophy wife. . . But as a little boy, raised in violence and excluded from the family home, she just wanted to belong. Now she believes her clients deserve no less.

Sarah Krasnostein has watched the extraordinary Sandra Pankhurst bring order and care to the living and the dead: A woman who sleeps among garbage she has not put out for forty years. A woman who lives with rats, random debris and terrified delusion. The still life of a home vacated by accidental overdose.


My Review:
The Trauma Cleaner is mainly a biography of the person currently going under the name Sandra Pankhurst. He was born a boy, was adopted as a baby into an abusive family, married, and had children before abandoning his family to pursue life as a female. During this period, he went by several different names and did a variety of jobs, including drag queen and prostitute. He underwent gender reassignment surgery to become a woman and has had a very eventful life since then. Due to drug abuse in her past, Sandra has gaps in her memory. The author pointed out some spots where Sandra hasn't accurately remembered what happened, so I assume the author double-checked to make sure the story was reasonably accurate.

In addition to the story of Sandra's past, we're told about her current health problems and her job as a trauma cleaner. She's the person you call to get a house cleaned up in cases of flooding, hoarding, and death. The author watched the start of several clean-up jobs, most of them involving hoarding. She described in detail what the rooms looked like (the items on the counter, what was written or molding on the wall, etc.). She also provided some of the person's story as to why it got this bad and described how Sandra convinced the customer to let them clean as they're still not ready to let go of the rubbish.

When I requested a review copy of this book, it was described as a book about cleaning up these places (and I was curious about how it's done). We get hints about how it's done throughout the eight job scene chapters, but these details would only fill up a few pages--at most, a chapter--when put together. So I was disappointed. This book is more for those interested in the lives of people coping the best they can (though generally not very well) with the trauma in their lives.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.