Fifteen Seconds of Brave

When Covid stopped the world turning in 2020, veteran journalist Melissa Doyle had already been thrown off course by life. She’d just turned 50, her eldest child had finally left home to study overseas and her 25-year-long career as a popular presenter at Channel Seven had come to an end. As she began to contemplate this new chapter, the unfolding and overarching scourge of Covid threw millions of lives into disarray, causing Melissa to wonder, ‘How on earth are we all going to come through this?’

While lockdowns and closed borders damaged livelihoods, relationships and the nation’s mental health, Melissa found herself reflecting on some of the true survivors she’d met during her years reporting from the front lines of triumph and tragedy. Surely these people had clues on how to navigate the fallout of a one-in-one-hundred-year plague.

In this new intimate and insightful book, Melissa gathers together remarkable people who have weathered hardship, grief, torment and loss on a scale many would find hard to comprehend. In revisiting these moving and captivating stories with those who lived them, she gently draws out their wisdom, empathy and their heartfelt practical advice to anyone who’s going through a difficult time or navigating change.