The past year has given us a totally new insight into and understanding of what a social crisis is. But what does a cataclysmic crisis look like to people who have experienced it close up – when everything they have falls apart and they have to rebuild their entire life from scratch?

The mother who had to come to terms with her daughter’s death at the hands of terrorists and the mother who had to cope with the fact that her son was a terrorist; the wife who suddenly discovered that her husband had condemned their family to a life of poverty through online gambling; the man who lost all use of his limbs and was written off by medical science until his wife found out that he was capable of communicating, albeit slowly and using just one finger; the man who wrote off the world and locked himself into his man-cave – for good.

With warm empathy and wisdom, award-winning journalist and author Marte Spurkland offers us a series of stories about collapse and apparent hopelessness, but also about the courage and unknown strength that lives in all of us.