Impossible: My Story

 By: Stan Walker

Location: NF 920 Wal

Genre: Stan Walker

A startling and important memoir about family and forgiveness, love and redemption

For the first time, Stan Walker speaks with startling honesty about abuse and addiction, hardship and excess, cancer and discrimination, and growing up in a family where love and violence were horribly entwined.

From one of the finest singers to emerge from Australia and New Zealand Aotearoa in a generation, Impossible is a story of redemption and the power of forgiveness. It's also a story about courage and hope; about a young Maori boy finding his place and purpose, never forgetting who he is and where he came from.

PRAISE FOR IMPOSSIBLE:

As a chronicle of Walker's life, it is gripping, but where the book achieves greatness - and I mean real, true greatness - is as a totem to humanity's capacity for kindness. It's an insight into the soul of a man whose capacity for forgiveness seems boundless.

- Sam Brooks

'This is a can't-put-down read, direct and proud and inspirational, an honest document of life in New Zealand on the wrong side of the tracks...'

- Steve Braunias

'A remarkable, improbable tale of a young Maori man (Tuhoe and Ngati Tuwharetoa) rising to greatness and finding his purpose after surviving horrific childhood abuse and countless other tragic situations.'

- Sebastian van der Zwan

For the first time, the incomparable R&B superstar Stan Walker tells his story of hurt, hope and courage. After definitively winning the 2009 season of Australian Idol at the age of 19, R&B sensation Stan Walker's career went from strength to strength. His first album, Introducing Stan Walker, went platinum in Australia and triple platinum in New Zealand; his second; From the Inside Out, debuted at number one on the New Zealand Albums Charts and number two on the ARIA charts. He's won multiple New Zealand Music Awards, been a judge on The X Factor NZ, and played starring roles in films Mt Zion and Born to Dance.

Yet few knew what he had had to overcome reach these dizzying heights.

Before Australian Idol, Walker had survived a childhood marred with poverty, domestic violence and sexual abuse; dabbled in crime and drug use; and suffered his own personal tragedy. For the first time, he speaks candidly about his rags-to-riches story - and the trials and tribulations he's had to deal with since.