A motivating and uplifting journey into a side of the middle east rarely seen by Westerners.

  I First picked up this book while browsing through our local megastore. I was looking for resources for the Junior ESL class that I teach. I was not immediately attracted to this story; I’ve been successful for years blocking out the wars in the middle east and the hypocrisies perpetrated by goverments on all sides.  But this book is pure hope. It has light.

Ask many people and they’ll tell you they can’t remember a single book they read in high school. I am confident that my students will cherish this story well into their adult lives.

I took it home and read it from front to back that very same day. Greg Mortenson’s prose has been condensed by David Relin, but still retains that same earnest quality that makes his boyish concern and naivety of danger compelling. The style is without embellishment, which maintains the innocence of the adventure.

The story begins as Greg Mortenson, having failed to reach the summit of K2 in Pakistan’s Korakoram range, is separated from the rest of his expedition. The purpose of the trek had been to honor the memory of his sister qho have succumbed to her fight with epilepsy.  Twice defeated, Greg wanders alone, lost in his own darkening spirit. Surviving seven days in the hostile climate, Greg stumbles into the village of Korphe in Baltistan, where he is greeted by the simple, warmhearted people. They nurse him back to health, and during his recovery he does what he can to pay back their kindness, using the skills he learned as a nurse in his hometown of San Francisco. But through their hospitality, Greg inevitably learns more from these people than he could ever hope to teach them.

This book is not a work of fiction. Something happened to Greg during that first trip, something that gave wings to a dissapearing spirit. Greg Mortenson has since dedicated his life to the education of the young and the poor in Pakistan and Afghanistan’s most remote areas.

With childlike naivety – or what one might even called stupidity, masquerading as heroic arrogance, Greg ventures headlong into a world of village chiefs, bandits, mullahs, soldiers, thieves, spiritual gurus, and of course, children yearning to learn. While you read, you feel is as though there is a halo around Greg. His efforts are exhaustive, but his energy seems to come from a very deep well.

At times, the book seems far-fetched; it can read like a story you heard from your Grandfather. At other times the book seems like a sales pitch for Greg’s Charitable Foundations. But this is not off-putting. It is all real, and told with patience. In fact, the story has a calming effect. Greg spent years trying to rush through his accomplishments, yet the one lesson he learned most, and that the reader with no doubt take away as well, is that patience and faith are the keys to living a fulfilled life.