Bridge Across My Sorrows

Christina Nobel's story is one of bravery and resilience in the face of deprivation and abuse on a scale most would find unimaginable. Her childhood in the Dublin slums barely merits the name: after the early death of her mother the family is split apart, their alcoholic father unable to care for them. Christina is sexually abused and later escapes from an orphanage only to become a destitute on the streets of Dublin. At sixteen she is pulled into a car by four men and raped repeatedly. Later, driven to near insanity by overwork and a violent husband, she finds in a dream the will to fight back. Yet this is no vision of luxury and self-indulgence; instead Christina's hope lies in a determination to work among the street children of Vietnam. And here the most extraordinary part of her story begins. To these needy children 'Mama Tina' became, and remains to this day, an irrepressible, unorthodox and staunch champion.