What could be better than a medical thriller written by a physician? Not since COMA by Robin Cook, and The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton, have I been this excited about a medical thriller. Author and physician Timothy D. Browne’s Maya Hope offers a devastating medical what-if scenario and then he backs it up with layers of believable science and human nature. The story is set in the medical mission field, those end-of-the-earth places where people suffer from lack of medical care. Places the rest of the world ignores. Places where the poor are the most vulnerable. Take a thrill ride to the remote villages of Guatemala where something is happening to the villagers that a visiting physician cannot ignore or explain until he digs deeper into unspeakable danger.

Maya Hope by Timothy Browne, MD

The Author

Dr. Browne knows these places. He served as a medical missionary for years. For example, he served on Mercy Ships in Serra Leone, Africa around the time the peace treaty was signed. Think Blood Diamonds and injuries by machete. It takes a special kind of courage or craziness to deliver medical care and mission work to the ends of the earth. Sierra Leone absolutely qualifies as the undesirable end of the earth, if you know what I mean.

I met Dr. Browne at a medical conference in Las Vegas, years after he invited my husband to work on the Mercy Ships mission to Sierra Leone, Africa. Dr. Browne mentioned his upcoming book then and I have been looking forward since then to seeing it published. Only someone who has worked in the mission field as a missionary could have written this story with such authenticity and accuracy.

I highly recommend this story, but buckle your seat belt. It’s a thrill ride that might leave you with a lasting unease from the “what if” premise.

So far the book is available in print, but perhaps Dr. Browne will offer it in eBook format in the future.