Cloud Messenger: Love and Loss in the Indian Himalayas

As a Canadian medical student, Karen Trollope-Kumar went to India to study social and preventive medicine and met a young pediatrician named Pradeep. His dream of working in the Himalayan foothills captured her imagination, and the man captured her heart. They married in a Hindu wedding ceremony and pledged to share a life of service and spiritual growth.
In this poignant, heartwarming, and gently humorous memoir, Karen recounts an eleven-year chapter of their unusual lives. She and Pradeep worked as medical doctors in the Himalayas, first in a rural hospital and later in remote mountain villages. When disaster struck - an assassination, an earthquake, a political crisis - their ideals, their safety, and their relationship are put at risk.
The Cloud Messenger is a story of adventure and idealism, culture and medicine, faith and love, and it raises enduring questions: How can we cross religious and cultural boundaries? What happens to our dreams in the face of danger and disillusionment? And when dreams diverge, when one spouse can no longer continue on a certain path, what path do we choose?

Author: Karen Trollope-Kumar
Publisher: FriesenPress
Published: 10/11/2016
Pages: 348
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.12lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.78d
ISBN: 9781460287705

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 04/15/2017 pg. 141

About the Author
Trollope-Kumar, Karen: - Karen Trollope-Kumar studied medicine at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. In her fourth year of medical studies she met her future husband, Pradeep, on a student visit to Lucknow. After graduation, she worked as a family physician in Thunder Bay before moving to India to marry the man she loved. They have two adult children, Sonia and Raman, who spent their early childhood in India.
After returning to Canada in 1996, Karen completed a PhD in medical anthropology, the study of health in its social and environmental context. She worked as a family physician in Hamilton and also became actively involved in medical education at McMaster University. She currently works as a family physician at the Grand River Community Health Centre in Brantford, Ontario. She and Pradeep spend part of every year in Dehradun, India, where they lived and worked early in their married life.

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