CATEGORY: Autobiography

Between the Mountain and the Sky

Maggie Doyne

Between the Mountain and the Sky turns a hopeful lens on the world and shows us what can happen when a single person takes a decisive action to help another and, in the process, changes the lives of thousands---including her own. 

Maggie's story begins in suburban New Jersey, in a comfortable middle-class family that supports her decision to take a gap year before starting college. During her travels, the trajectory of her life dramatically alters when she has a surprise encounter with a Nepali girl breaking rocks in a quarry. Maggie, alongside her cofounder Tope Malla and the local community, decides to invest her life savings of five thousand dollars to buy a piece of land and open a children's home and school in Nepal. This decision takes her on an emotional journey of more than a decade as she works with women and children and faces her greatest fears, questions, and heartbreaks. 

Maggie, Tope, and their team at BlinkNow have been recognized around the world for their innovative, sustainable, and community-based work. However, this book isn't a how-to for fledgling philanthropists or nonprofit founders---it's a coming-of-age story about a young woman suspended between two worlds, as well as the love, loss, healing, and hope she experiences along the way. Maggie's inspiring, intimate tale shows readers an important truth: the power to change the world exists within all of us.