Chessie Henry didn't know the full extent of what her father did on February 22, 2011, until she interviewed him.

A powerful new earthquake memoir explores a family's grief, and its resilience. Philip Matthews reports.

The heart of Chessie Henry's impressive first book, We Can Make a Life, is a long interview with her father, Chris, as the pair drove south from Kaikōura to Christchurch.

The drive takes about two and a half hours. Henry's iPhone was tied to the steering wheel with a bungee cord. She pressed start on the recording app and they talked.

It was February 2017. Nearly six years earlier, Christchurch had been hit by the worst of the earthquakes in its sequence of many thousands of shakes. The earthquake on February 22, 2011, killed 185 people – 115 of them in the CTV building on Madras St.

That much is very well-known. You remember the smoking ruin. But Henry was hearing more about what her Dad did on that day.

Six months before the interview, Chris Henry had been one of three Canterbury medical professionals honoured with bravery medals for their efforts at the CTV building. In a Press report in August 2016, Chris Henry and the other two men – doctor David Richards and paramedic James Watkins – talked about the day's horrors, the risks they took and the nightmares they lived with.

Chris Henry is a Kaikōura GP who happened to be in Christchurch on the day. When the quake struck at 12.51pm, he drove to Christchurch Hospital to see if he could help. He was told to jump in an ambulance and to go wherever it took him.

That was to Latimer Square, where he helped set up a makeshift morgue. He said in 2016: "I had to assess whether they were alive or dead. It's one of the things that has troubled me. You couldn't see what colour they were, everything was shaking, the only pulse I could hear was mine. That has really stuck in my mind."

This is just the beginning. Later he crawled through makeshift tunnels in the wreckage of the CTV building, looking for the living and the dead.

ANDREW SPENCER Chris Henry was awarded a bravery medal for his work during the earthquake but was also suffering from burn-out.

The tunnels were narrow spaces that were barely as wide as a man's shoulders, and he and others had to crawl forward and then be pulled back by their feet, he explained. There was no room to turn around.

"In my recollection of the whole day, which I'm not sure is even true, the people were unbelievably quiet," he told his daughter as they drove. "Stoic, for the most part. They'd been trapped for hours ... Amongst the gloom and the rocks I'd suddenly realise I was seeing someone's upper body, or someone's head, and they'd be looking at me with great wide eyes."

Some were already dead. Some survived. They had to consider amputating a foot on the spot to pull one woman out ("She was absolutely terrified"). It was hot and there were aftershocks and when Chris Henry finally got away at 1am, he went looking for one of his sons, who was still waiting at school.

It is highly upsetting stuff, of course. In her book, Henry writes that the account her father gave as they drove to Christchurch was the first time she had heard about the day in detail. She was genuinely shocked: "The events of this interview are harrowing, and towards the end Dad had tears rolling down his cheeks as he spoke to me."

"I seem to get sadder as time goes on," Chris Henry said near the end of the interview. "I feel more grief. I didn't feel sad for years, really, afterwards."

The drive was highly emotional for them both, Henry recalls as she talks by phone from Portland, Oregon, where she is on a working holiday before the book is launched.

"Once he started talking, it all came out, and I don't think we were prepared for that," she says. "That happened a lot in writing this book. You don't realise how close some things are to the surface until you start to write about them.

"I didn't know the story either, so it was unfolding for me. I knew parts of it but not the level of detail."

JOHN KIRK-ANDERSON/STUFF The horrific site of the CTV building on the afternoon of February 22, 2011.

The rest of the book is crafted by Henry but this section is a direct transcript of the conversation. The horror of that long day and night slowly accumulates.

"I didn't want it to feel like I had written this dramatic literary account," she says. "You're dealing with something that was so traumatic to so many people."

It seemed more natural to write "this genuine account of how it was". It was often said after the earthquakes that literary craft and storytelling could not compete with the raw truth and stark facts of the day. This is a perfect example.

ORDINARY FAMILY HAPPINESS

Chessie, short for Francesca, is 26 years old and the eldest of Chris and Esther Henry's five children. In a way, her story is mostly a story of ordinary family happiness. Her parents come out from the UK and settle in the beachside suburb of Sumner. The kids live comfortable lives and go to good schools. Sumner is a kind of paradise for children.

But there is also an adventurous, risk-taking strain that Henry says she and her four brothers have inherited – two of the brothers are doing something in Mexico as we speak. When her parents honeymooned, they drove from the north of Africa to the south in a Land Rover. The romantic journey included being held at gunpoint by rogue soldiers.

After about nine settled years in Sumner, the family decamped to Tokelau when Henry's father became the island doctor. The five kids were aged from 3 to 9.

"In its own way, Tokelau was a mad idea, an impractical idea – and, as it turned out, a flat-out dangerous idea as well," she writes. "But in going, we would be doing something outrageous, and that will always spark something in my mother despite any hesitations."

Supplied Sometimes family adventurousness could turn risky. Chessie and two of her brothers wait for rescue when their boat breaks down in Tokelau.

There is a harrowing set piece on Tokelau when her father tries to keep twin baby girls alive in relatively primitive conditions. One lives and one dies. It becomes obvious that Chris is unusually emotionally invested in the outcome of his patients. And as the book develops, the true subject of this family memoir becomes clearer. Henry is writing about the impossible strains on rural doctors.

Back in Kaikōura, her dad tries to cope with the workload and the stress. He burns out. He drafts anguished emails in the middle of the night and tries to work out where to send them. A story about courage and risk, and family resilience, therefore takes another turn: do you have the courage to face up to your vulnerability? A week before receiving his bravery medal, he writes of feeling frightened.

This is the flipside of bravery, the side we don't see. And the serious issue of under-resourced, over-worked rural doctors was a starting point for the book, Henry says.

"It was a feeling of frustration, watching this train crash," she says. "Mum and I kept saying, 'Who can we ring? Who can we tell?'"

Every family has a story to tell. It helps that Henry is a gifted writer. She studied fiction writing for her Masters at Wellington's famous writing school, the International Institute of Modern Letters, even though creative non-fiction is a more natural style for her. "I think the course taught me how to stick with a project."

She was taught by leading writers Pip Adam and Emily Perkins and had Elizabeth Knox as her mentor. Ridiculous good luck, really.

"Honestly, it was crazy. These are women I so look up to. I was pretty in awe of them the whole time."

Knox has a blurb on the book, praising Henry's patient confidence and feeling for place. Middlemore Hospital intensive care specialist David Galler, author of a book called Things That Matter, talks about Henry's insight and wisdom "that defy her young age". Like Knox, he calls the book deeply moving.

It is hard to disagree. This is a big subject: how do children, as they become adults themselves, understand and evaluate the lives of their parents and the choices they made? And how do you write so openly about matters that could be seen as deeply personal?

"What amazes me about people in general is our capacity to carry on and evolve," Henry says.

The project developed quickly in the year after Henry finished her Masters. She had a day job and started writing around it, interviewing her parents when she could.

"I nervously gave it to my family around Christmas time. I was like, 'Sorry about this'. My brothers all loved it. They were like, 'Oh my gosh, it's like an actual book'. I don't know what they thought I was doing. They were really stoked for me."

Her parents, though, found it "tougher to confront some of those observations I've had and there were parts that definitely made them feel vulnerable". There was some negotiation over ways to phrase some parts but no flat-out rejections or vetos.

The thought that the book is now going beyond her family and friends and into the wider world "feels pretty scary" but she is pleased to hear that readers might find it helpful. If we can't relate to being a doctor on February 22, we can probably relate to losing a beloved family home to yet another earthquake, as Henry's mother does in Clarence, near Kaikōura, in 2016. What does it mean to go home when home is gone?

"Mum's experience, the loss of home, is maybe less dramatic than Dad crawling into the CTV building but it might make someone else think their experience is valid. That this makes them feel better is an ideal scenario."

Despite all that happens, Henry still thinks that her family is lucky. By which she means that they are white, middle-class New Zealanders with a parent with a steady job.

"Dad said he was struggling and we said we can deal with it. Some families in New Zealand have got absolutely nothing."

We Can Make a Life: A Memoir of Family, Earthquakes and Courage (Victoria University Press, $35) is published on August 9. It will be launched at WORD Christchurch on August 31, when Chessie and Chris Henry are in conversation with Bronwyn Hayward. More details at wordchristchurch.co.nz