Something is crawling over my face. My body turns to stone as panic takes hold of me. The taste of metal floods my mouth all at once. Blood.

Wreathed in darkness beneath the ruins of a fish restaurant, gasping for dense polluted air, twenty-seven-year-old Maayan Sebbag wakes knowing one thing: she is about to die. It is May 12, 2008. The worst earthquake in Chinese memory has just hit Sichuan Province, burying her and her friend Anat under tons of steel and concrete.

But Maayan makes an impossible decision: she will not wait for rescue. With her face shattered and bleeding, her friend’s finger severed, and nothing but hope and a backpack, she undertakes a three-day trek across devastated mountains, raging rivers, and flooded villages toward the hospital in Chengdu. Over terrain that seems impassable and with a body approaching death, she is guided by strangers who become angels, an inner voice that refuses to surrender, and a profound Near-Death Experience that answers the one question that matters: why choose to live?

Unburied is the harrowing and ultimately transcendent memoir of a young woman’s encounter with the impossible—and her discovery of what it truly means to be alive. Part survival story, part spiritual awakening, part healing guide, Sebbag’s account weaves together visceral details, Traditional Chinese Medicine frameworks, and insights rooted in both Jewish mysticism and Eastern philosophy. The result is a book that transforms readers’ understanding of crisis, resilience, choice, and transformation.