Review: Alive! compiled by the editors of Reader’s Digest (Belinda’s review)

Alive! 
written by Various Writers for an anthology of short stories
published by Reader’s Digest

find it here: (affiliate links) Barnes & Noble, Amazon, iBooks, Book Depository, Goodreads

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange  for an honest review.

Did I enjoy this book: This book has a vast variety of stories told by ordinary people who survived extraordinary events. You’ll find shipwrecks, tornados, plane crashes, fires, etc. It’s a great book to have at the doctor’s office or car pool. You can enjoy a story or two without getting sucked into a whole novel.

I want to give a shout out to “The Tot and the Twister” by Derek Burnett. It is one of my favorite stories from the anthology. I remember that tornado. I used to live just down the road from that neighborhood. It serves as a reminder of just how close something like that can come to any of us at any time.

Would I recommend it: Yes.

About the book – from Goodreads: Alive! is a heart-stopping collection of survival stories from the archives of Reader’s Digest Drama in Real Life series. Editors have mined the Readers Digest archives to bring readers Alive! Extraordinary Stories of Ordinary People Who Survived Deadly Tornadoes, Avalanches, Shipwrecks and More.

In Super Storm Rick Gregory, an off-duty patrolman watches an F3 tornado ravage his small Tennessee town where split-second decisions make the difference between life and death. In Avalanche Luke Edgar, a young father and backcountry snowboarder goes out with a buddy for a fun day on Mt. Rainier and gets buried alive in an avalanche. Swarm tells the story of the Walker family, out for a day trip in the Florida marsh when they get entangled in a yellow-jacket nest. The mother, Debbie, fighting anaphylactic shock must leave her injured husband and children in order to find help as time runs out. Adventure writer Tim Cahill recounts how he barely survives the extreme heat of Death Valley despite his experience as an outdoorsman in Across the Valley of Fire, and in Pacific Cyclone Tony Farrington tells the harrowing story of the crews of three sailboats who run into an unimaginable storm in the normally calm South Pacific. Readers will be on the edge of their seats as they are drawn into the dramatic tales of everyday people suddenly cast into life or death situations. Whether out on a planned adventure or simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, the heroes of these stories are connected by their fierce desire to survive against all odds. Wildfires, blizzards, attacks by grizzlies, jet crashes in the jungle, are just some of the conditions people face in these stories of survival. Readers will be on the edge of their seats as they follow adventurers and laymen alike as they face down nature’s fury in the most extreme circumstances, and find strength they didn’t know they had, proving the depth and resilience of the human spirit. As Tim Cahill so elegantly puts it, “Then I knew, really knew, that there is a way to get from one extreme to the other, the peaks and valleys. And there is a beauty so fierce only savage emotions like fear and triumph allow us to see it.”