Maureen Mayhew Launching Hand on My Heart (In Person + Streaming)
Friday May 26 2023 7:00 pm, Saskatoon, Travel Alcove & YouTube
Join Dr. Maureen Mayhew for the Saskatoon launch of her memoir, Hand on My Heart: A Canadian Doctor's Awakening in Afghanistan (Caitlin Press).
The event will be hosted live in the Travel Alcove, and also available as a simultaneous YouTube stream. The video will remain available for viewing thereafter. Before arriving, please review details of how to attend physical events here at the store.
Hand on My Heart juxtaposes Maureen Mayhew’s experiences as a foreign, female physician in Afghanistan with an exploration of identity as a professional woman in the 21st century. Travelling from one remote outpost to another, sharing cups of tea in secret, muddling through language barriers, and brokering trust with patients, she finds her Western beliefs challenged and tries to make sense of her own struggles with gender roles. With curiosity and tenderness, she reflects on moments of disorientation, fear, wonder, joy and personal growth. Mayhew’s memoir is a moving account that takes readers along an uncharted path into mysteries of the human heart.
Maureen Mayhew is a family doctor, a clinical professor at UBC, and a certified leadership coach. She has spent three decades providing primary care and leading public health programs across Canada, Asia and Africa, and currently works for the BC Physician Health Program. A life-changing Doctors Without Borders mission to Afghanistan in 2000 inspired her to spend the next decade supporting Afghans to rebuild their shattered healthcare system, and to improve maternal and child health in remote settings. Hand on My Heart: A Canadian Doctor’s Awakening in Afghanistan is her first book.
See:
Hand on My Heart
- Maureen Mayhew 
Trade paperback
$26.00 - Add to Cart
Reader Reward Price: $23.40
When Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) offered to send Maureen Mayhew to Taliban-occupied Afghanistan, she refused. Fearing she would be forced to give up her independence to preserve her safety, it was the last place on earth she wanted to volunteer medical expertise. But events didn't unfold as she had anticipated and in April 2000, wrapped in unfamiliar clothing, she stepped out onto the Afghan dust for the first time. Walking toward Taliban immigration officials, a fire raged in her belly and a tremor shot through the hand grasping her blue knapsack. Little did she know that she would return to this country seven more times over the span of a decade, learn to converse in the regional Afghan language of Dari, and develop lasting relationships with women, men--even members of the Taliban--and families through her work as a physician.
In Hand on My Heart: Awakening in Afghanistan, Mayhew juxtaposes her experiences of Afghanistan as a foreign, female physician with her personal journey of questioning who she is as a professional woman in the 21st century. As she travels from one remote outpost to another, sharing cups of tea in secret, muddling through language barriers, and brokering trust with her patients, she finds her Western beliefs challenged and makes sense of her own struggles with gender roles. With curiosity and tenderness, Mayhew reflects on moments of disorientation, fear, wonder and joy. Hand on My Heart is a moving account that takes readers on an uncharted path into the mysteries of the human heart.
