Himalayan Dhaba
by By Danner, Craig Joseph
Category: Fiction , Literary

Mary, a newly widowed American doctor, travels to a remote hospital high in the Indian Himalayas to work with a colleague of her late husband. She arrives to find this other doctor missing, the hospital abandoned, and herself the only medical provider within a hundred miles.Caught between shattering loneliness and harrowing self-doubt, she struggles to overcome daunting medical and cultural obstacles in a yearlong odyssey of healing and redemption that connects her with a cast of unexpected characters.There is Amod, the waiter in the local dhaba, who secretly adores and watches out for the doctor. Phillip is a young and lonely British traveler who lands in the doctor's care before he is kidnapped deep into the snowbound Himalayan interior. Antone is the aging kidnapper whose every plan goes sour. And finally there is Meena - abandoned by her family to serve the abusive men of an isolated road crew - who finds the courage to guide herself and young Phillip to their salvation. As the lives of these characters intersect with her own, Mary learns not only to heal others, but also to heal herself.