Healing Lives

Click here to watch a video of Dame Quentin Bryce & Sue Williams in conversation on Healing Lives. 

Two incredible women, an unlikely friendship, and a united mission to save the lives of some of the world's most vulnerable women. Healing Lives reveals the untold tale of Mamitu Gashe, Dr Catherine Hamlin's protégée, and the inspiring almost 60-year friendship between the two women.

In 1962, three years after doctors Catherine and Reg Hamlin arrived in Ethiopia, Mamitu Gashe sought their aid. Mamitu was close to death and horrifically injured during childbirth at the age of just fourteen in a remote mountain village.

Drs Catherine and Reg Hamlin saved her and, in return, Mamitu dedicated her life to saving other women. Under the Hamlin's guidance, Mamitu went from mopping floors and comforting her fellow patients, to becoming one of the most acclaimed fistula surgeons in the world, despite never having had a day's schooling.

This is the moving story of the friendship that saved the lives of over 60,000 of the poorest women on earth.

View other books about the Hamlin story, The Hospital by the River and Catherine’s Gift - both amazing stories and inspirational books. Click here to see how book clubs can get involved! 

Sue Williams is an award-winning journalist, travel writer and best-selling author of 23 books. Previous biographies include Mean Streets, Kind Heart: The Father Chris Riley Story; Father Bob, the larrikin priest; The Last Showman Fred Brophy; No Time For Fear, Paul de Gelder; The Girl Who Climbed Everest, and a number of books about Australian outback characters. Sue, originally from the UK but now living in Australia for 30 years, has also spent much of her life travelling in Africa, and wrote one book based mostly there, Getting There: Journeys of an Accidental Adventurer. She returns regularly.