SISTERS OF MOKAMA

The story of six Kentucky nuns who forged a new life in India.

In her debut book, New York Times Opinion editor Thottam draws on detailed archival sources and more than 60 interviews to create a vivid history of a hospital and nursing school established in the small Indian town of Mokama in 1947 by six members of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, whose “ambition and longing, passion and hunger” fueled their desire for bold, new challenges. Ranging in age from their early 20s to 50, buoyed with hope and excitement, they set out for India knowing no Hindi and without a clue about conditions in a nation that had just emerged from British rule and the trauma of Partition. After an arduous journey by sea and rail, they faced a stunning reality. Mokama, riddled by violence, was populated by the war-ravaged and destitute who had fled brutality and the loss of their homes. The physical conditions were daunting: The Jesuits who had invited them provided a large, unheated structure with no electricity or running water; no hospital beds; no medicines; and no doctors, nurses, or other staff. Weeks after their arrival, supplies finally came, and Nazareth Hospital, as they named it, began seeing patients. A young doctor arrived in 1948, and by 1949, the nuns, working tirelessly, offered basic primary care, a village health center, and a school to train nurses—aspiring young women like Thottam’s mother—who came from all over India. In 1952, they established a leprosy clinic. Nearly eight decades later, the hospital still exists, serving “the poor and the extremely ill, for whom Nazareth is still the only option.” The author offers candid, sympathetic portraits of the doctors and nurses who arrived through the years to staff the hospital and especially of the six original founders. “They are women,” she writes, “who took hold of uncertainty, saw a void, and would not let go until they had shaped it into something closer to the life they desired.”

An inspiring story of faith and dedication.