"Now with a new postscript and reading group guide, perfect for book clubs. "
After nearly dying of breast cancer in her twenties, Sarah Thebarge fled her successful career, her Ivy League education, and a failed relationship, and moved nearly 3,000 miles from the East Coast to Portland, Oregon, hoping to quietly pick up the pieces of her broken life. Instead, a chance encounter on the train with a family of Somali refugees swept her into an adventure that changed all of their lives.
Half a world away from Somalia, Hadhi was fighting battles of her own. Abandoned by her husband, she was struggling to raise five young daughters in a culture she didn't understand. When their worlds collide with Sarah's, Hadhi and the girls were on the brink of starvation in their own home, "invisible" in a neighborhood of strangers. As Sarah helped Hadhi and the girls navigate American life, her unexpected outreach to the family became both a source of courage and a lifeline for herself.
Exquisite, at times shattering, Sarah's enthralling memoir invites readers into her story of finding connection, love, and redemption in the most unlikely of places.
All proceeds from the sale of the book go toward a college fund for the five Somali Invisible Girls. For details, visit www.sarahthebarge.com.

When Sarah applied to the Yale physicians assistant program and the admissions panel asked why they should admit her, she replied, "Because I'm going to change the world some day." After more than a decade of practicing medicine and encountering the medical world herself as a cancer patient, she still wanted to change the world through medicine. She optimistically raised funds to serve without pay in a mission hospital in one of the world's poorest countries, only to struggle daily with death and shocking diseases, many of which had simple, but unavailable cures. And, in a harrowing bout with malaria, she nearly succumbed herself. As she explores both her motivation and the mission, she ponders how to make the world "well."

Sarah Thebarge, a Yale-trained physician assistant, nearly died of breast cancer at age twenty-seven, but that did not end her deeply felt spiritual calling to medical missions in Africa. Risking her own health, she moved to Togo, West Africa-ranked by the United Nations as the least happy country in the world-to care for sick and suffering patients. Serving without pay in a mission hospital, she pondered the intersection of faith and medicine in her quest to help make the world "well." In the hospital wards, she witnessed death over and over again. In the outpatient clinic, she daily diagnosed patients with deadly diseases, many of which had simple but unavailable cures. She lived in austere conditions and nearly succumbed herself in a harrowing bout with malaria. She describes her experiences in gripping detail and reflects courageously about difficult and deep human connections-across race, culture, material circumstances, and medical access. Her experience exemplifies the triumph of surviving in order to share the stories that often go untold. In the end, WELL is an invitation to ask what happens when, instead of asking why God allows suffering to happen in the world, we ask, "Why do we?"