Reading the Globe

Christiana Mara Coelho was born into extreme poverty in Brazil. After spending the first seven years of her life with her loving mother in the forest caves outside São Paulo and then on the city streets, where they begged for food, she and her younger brother were suddenly put up for adoption. When one door closed on the only life Christiana had ever known and on the woman who protected her with all her heart, a new one opened.

As Christina Rickardsson, she’s raised by caring adoptive parents in Sweden, far from the despairing favelas of her childhood. Accomplished and outwardly “normal,” Christina is also filled with rage over what she’s lost and having to adapt to a new reality while struggling with the traumas of her youth. When her world falls apart again as an adult, Christina returns to Brazil to finally confront her past and unlock the truth of what really happened to Christiana Mara Coelho.

A memoir of two selves, Never Stop Walking is the moving story of the profound love between families and one woman’s journey from grief and loss to survival and self-discovery.

Christina Rickardsson was born in 1983 as Christiana Mara Coelho in Brazil. At the age of seven, she was taken to an orphanage along with her younger brother and then out to Vindeln, a village located in the north of Sweden in a region called Västerbotten. After Christina finished her memoir, Never Stop Walking, she founded the Coelho Growth Foundation, which brings awareness to the plight of child poverty.