"I marvel to think of six nuns from Appalachia in the 1940s journeying to India and facing unimaginable dangers to build a hospital that would transform so many lives. Thottam's prose and her extensive research bring this inspiring story to life.
Sisters of Mokoma
is proof that faith and courage does move mountains." —Abraham Verghese, author of
Cutting for Stone
New York Times
editor Jyoti Thottam’s mother was part of an extraordinary group of Indian women. Born in 1946, a time when few women dared to leave their house without the protection of a man, she left home by herself at just fifteen years old and traveled to the small town of Mokama in Bihar—an impoverished and isolated state in northern India that had been one of the bloodiest regions of Partition— to train to be a nurse under the tutelage of the Appalachian nuns who ran Nazareth Hospital. Like Thottam’s mother’s journey, the hospital was a radical undertaking: it was run almost entirely by women, who insisted on giving the highest possible standard of care to everyone who walked through its doors, regardless of caste or religion.
Fascinated by her mother’s story, Thottam set out to discover the full story of Nazareth Hospital, established in 1947 by six intrepid nuns from Kentucky. In
Sisters of Mokama,
Thottam draws upon 20 years’ worth of research to tell their inspiring story for the first time. She brings to life the hopes, struggles, and accomplishments of these ordinary women—both American and Indian—who succeeded against all odds during the tumult and trauma of the years after World War II and Partition. Pain and loss were everywhere for the women of that time, but the collapse of old orders provided the women of Nazareth Hospital with a chance to create for themselves lives that would never have been possible otherwise.