Join us at Unity Books Wellington to hear Jason Gurney speak about his recent memoir, The Twisted Chain, published by Otago University Press. Jason will be chatting with Professor Michael Baker about his work as an epidemiologist and transferring his research on to the page.

This is a powerful story about Jason's father, who was diagnosed with rheumatic fever when he was 14 years old.

About the book

'Woven of memoir, science and history, The Twisted Chain stands with the best in its genre. Storytelling has the power to change the world, and this is one of those stories.' — Emma Wehipeihana

In the winter of 1969, a 14-year-old Whangārei schoolboy called Keg went to a weekend rugby tournament and came home with a sore throat. Soon he was bedbound with a blazing fever, painful wrists, elbows and knees, and – most worrying of all – damage to his heart. He had been diagnosed with rheumatic fever, and his life was changed forever.

Rheumatic fever is an inflammatory autoimmune disease, usually contracted in childhood. It starts with a sore throat; left untreated it can cause serious, life-long damage to the heart. Despite its status as a developed country, Aotearoa New Zealand has one of the highest rates of rheumatic fever in the world. More than 90 percent of the country’s cases occur in Māori and Pasifika communities.

Author and researcher Jason Gurney knows Keg’s story intimately; he is Keg’s son. In The Twisted Chain, Gurney describes living in the long shadow cast by this disease. He writes of emergency night-time drives to Auckland’s Middlemore Hospital, of panicky hours waiting for medical help. He describes how these frighteningly vulnerable experiences sparked some of the questions that led him to a career in public health. ‘I wanted,’ he writes, ‘to research the causes and effects of rheumatic fever. It was my way of fighting back against the illness that had changed the trajectory of my family’s life.’

The Twisted Chain chronicles the profound impact of rheumatic fever on individuals and whānau and critiques the socio-political decisions (or lack thereof) that enable this preventable disease to thrive in modern-day Aotearoa New Zealand.

Free event – all welcome!