At 27, breast cancer ended Sarah Thebarge's career, her studies and her romance. She fled across the country for a fresh start, where a chance meeting with Somali refugees, the "invisible girls" of this memoir's title, renewed her strength and her faith.
Growing up in a conservative Christian minister's family, Sarah exceeded her culture's expectations, earning a graduate degree from Yale, working as a physician's assistant and studying journalism at Columbia. She had a steady boyfriend and a well-planned future when she was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer. She nearly died at several points during the brutal 18 months of surgeries and treatments. Her boyfriend abandoned her, friends broke their promises of support and, as her body struggled, her faith faltered as well.
Determined to start anew, she moved to Portland, Ore., where one day a game of public transit peek-a-boo with a Somali girl led to her visiting the girl's home, and soon she was fast friends with her impoverished young mother, who'd been abandoned by her husband soon after they immigrated, along with five daughters. Sarah provided, from groceries and coats to deciphering social services and social customs. Sarah's path of loss and survival parallels that of young Hadhi and her daughters, and they satisfied a mutual need for a sense of belonging--of becoming visible--in each other.
At this often painful memoir's end, Sarah imparts a sense of hope--her faith, health and the refugee family she loves are stable. Readers, caring about them all, will embrace her optimism. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, bookseller, Book Passage, San Francisco