The Invisible Girls

Twenty-seven-year-old Sarah The barge had it all - a loving boyfriend, an Ivy League degree, and a successful career - when her life was derailed by an unthinkable diagnosis: aggressive breast cancer. After surviving the grueling treatments - though just barely - Sarah moved to Portland, Oregon to start over. There, a chance encounter with an exhausted African mother and her daughters transformed her life again.

A Somali refugee whose husband had left her, Hadhi was struggling to raise five young daughters, half a world a way from her war-torn homeland. Alone in a strange country, Hadhi and the girls were on the brink of starvation in their own home, "invisible" to their neighbors and to the world. As Sarah helped Hadhi and the girls navigate American life, her outreach to the family became a source of courage and a lifeline for herself.

Poignant, at times shattering, Sarah The barge's riveting memoir invites readers to engage in her story of finding connection, love, and redemption in the most unexpected places.

Sarah Thebarge is an international speaker and the author of The Invisible Girls, named a World Magazine 2013 Notable Book. Sarah earned her physician assistant degree at Yale and was studying journalism at Columbia when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. In spite of nearly losing her life to cancer, she went on to care for refugees in the United States and provide medical care to people living in the developing world. In addition to practicing medicine in Togo, she served in the Dominican Republic and started a clinic in Kenya for children who lost their parents to AIDS. Sarah is a spokesperson for Compassion International. She returns to San Francisco when she is not traveling the world.