Customer Reviews

Catherine's Gift: Stories of Hope from the Hospital by the River

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Dr. Catherine Hamlin wrote a story that will touch your heart . . . and make you want to change the world as well! Her account of the plight of Ethiopian women with obstetrical fistula's is one that I will never forget. This book helps us realize how easy we have it in the first world . . . and how we are called to do something for those who have nothing!

I'd heard about the fistula hospital in Ethiopia after I was diagnosed with a fistula from my own childbirth experience in North America. Because of where I live, I had to wait over a year for surgery to heal me and even then ended up traveling to another country to find my own healing for myself. People had told me to watch the movie about it, but I didn't think my own raw emotions could handle it. However, when I walked into a bookstore and glimpsed this book, something told me to pick it up and see what it was about. Sure enough, I began to cry as soon as I read the word "fistula". I bought the book that day and discovered that it included story after story of women with my plight. The author had somehow managed to understand and articulate the emotions women with obstetric fistulas go through. I find that incredible, especially because the author is a man. The further I read, the more my own heart was allowed to grieve and find hope and healing. By the end of the book, I was ready to go to Ethiopia and ask to mop up after the women waiting to be seen. Somehow, I wanted to offer them the same hope that I had found, not only through my surgical healing but also the healing I found in John Little's writing. This book is one that will stay on my library shelf and will be read more than once. I am so grateful it came into my life when it did.