Book Review - In This Altered Body: A Survivor's Story of Resilience and Love
Written on May 20, 2025
To celebrate the incredible talent within our community and provide readers with a diverse range of inspiring stories, Journey Magazine highlights books by burn community authors in each edition. In this issue, we're proud to feature a review of In This Altered Body: A Survivor's Story of Resilience and Love by Charlene Pell.
To share your book, submit the title, author(s) name, and a high-resolution cover image to resources@phoenix-society.org.
In This Altered Body: A Survivor's Story of Resilience and Love
Charlene Pell wears her scars like badges of honor—she has never hidden them.
Thirty years ago, on a sunny afternoon, Charlene was on a private flight to Cat Island, Bahamas, when the unthinkable happened: the plane, piloted by her fiancé, experienced a mechanical problem and crashed in a fiery inferno. When Charlene awoke, she discovered that 64 percent of her body had been burned and her fiancé had died.
In This Altered Body is the compelling story of Charlene’s physical and emotional odyssey to reclaim her life and identity after surviving a tragedy that left her facially disfigured and grieving. As Charlene begins the long, painful process of recovery, she fears she will never be loved again, because her outward beauty has been destroyed and our society, obsessed with flawless skin and superficial beauty, stigmatizes disfigurement. But through dogged determination, Charlene overcomes difficult obstacles both physical and emotional—and learns from the experiences of other burn survivors to never write off her dreams and to be open to possibilities…including love. Brimming with insight from a life of perseverance, In This Altered Body is a piercing memoir about tragic loss and the resilience of the human spirit.
Book review by Rick Halpert, Phoenix Society Supporter and Ally
For over 50 years, I have had the honor of working with burn survivors—hearing their stories, reading their books, and sharing their journeys. Yet, never in that time have I encountered a more compelling story than this one.
Charlene Pell was a strikingly beautiful, professionally accomplished woman with boundless energy and an infectious spirit. But in an instant, everything changed when she survived a fiery airplane crash. As she climbed from the wreckage, she had no idea what the next several years would bring: excruciating and relentless physical, emotional, and spiritual pain. Her gifted writing style allows her readers to feel some of her pain. It is so real that I could only read a few pages at a time.
Was it worth it? Beyond any question. This book is more than a survival story—it’s an edge-of-your-seat mystery. Could doctors save her body? Could she preserve her soul? Would she ever love or be loved again? Was her life over, or was it just beginning?
The reader will be inspired—not just by HER story, but by the depth and breadth of the human spirit. Whatever struggles the reader may face—physical, emotional, or spiritual—her words remind us that survival is possible. Not only survival, but renewal.
We will make it. Just as she did.