Between the Mountain and the Sky
A Mother’s Story of Love, Loss, Healing, and Hope
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Now an Award-Winning Documentary from The Duplass Brothers.
Between the Mountain and the Sky shows us the goodness that is possible when a single person--regardless of age--takes action to help another and, in the process, changes the lives of hundreds.
Maggie’s story begins in suburban New Jersey, in a comfortable middle-class family that supports her decision to travel the world during a gap year before starting college. During her travels, the trajectory of her life alters when she has a surprise encounter with a Nepali girl breaking rocks in a quarry. Maggie decides to invest her life savings of five thousand dollars to buy a piece of land and open a children’s home in Nepal.
That home becomes Kopila Valley Children’s Home, and eventually, the nonprofit Maggie launches, the BlinkNow Foundation, also starts the Kopila Valley School, which provides tuition-free education for more than four hundred students. Maggie and BlinkNow’s work have been recognized around the world for their innovative, sustainable work.
However, this book isn’t a how-to for fledging philanthropists or nonprofit founders--it’s a coming-of-age story about a young woman suspended between two worlds, as well as the love, loss, healing, and hope she experiences along the way. And Maggie’s inspiring, intimate tale shows readers an important truth: the power to change the world exists within all of us.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Doyne, founder of Kopila Valley Children's Home, traces in this affecting work the extraordinary decade in which she "moved to Nepal, built a house, raised fifty-four children... and experienced the wildest love imaginable." After working with Nepali refugees at a school on the Ganges river in 2009, Doyne decided, at age 19, to drain her college fund to build a home for orphaned children in war-torn Surkhet. She charts her love affair with the town, while weaving in the inspiring story of her personal growth alongside that of her organization, colleagues, and children—from raising funds for her nonprofit, BlinkNow, to being caught in the crossfire of political strife with the government ("They accuse me of... exploiting the children, and being a Christian conversion organization, which is illegal in Nepal") to growing BlinkNow's mission to include education and female empowerment. Doyne's writing is by turns humorously self-effacing—"I'm not the first white girl to cross an ocean with a backpack to try to find herself on (well, near) a mountain"—and achingly moving, most notably when she recognizes the "horrible luxury" of grief she is afforded in the wake of one child's death. This soulful story of tenacity is immensely inspiring.
