Review | FROM MOUNTAINS TO MEDICINE by Erica M. Elliott, MD (Ecuador)

Review — 

Mountain to Medicine
Peace Corps experience

From Mountains to Medicine: Scaling the Heights in Search of My Calling
Erica M. Elliott, M.D. (Ecuador 1974–76)
Lammastide Publishing
January 2024
383 pages
$19.95 (paperback), $16.99 (Kindle), 1 credit (audiobook– author narrator

Reviewed by Sue Hoyt Aiken (Ethiopia 1962-64)

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Erica Elliott, M.D.
Ecidor 1974–76

This is a remarkable memoir with vivid descriptions that confirmed how happy I , as the reader, was to be safely at home and not dangling from a rope at a very high altitude! It is fair to say her story takes us to the depths of despair, confusion, darkness and up to the highest peaks, exhilaration, pure joy and onward to many life accomplishments. As a Peace Corps Volunteer and Returned Peace Corps Volunteer she takes the life lessons learned while in these roles into a variety of situations.

But before the Peace Corps there was a teaching experience with the Navaho in New Mexico, complicated family relationships, as well as college. While many of us can relate to these situations, we may not find ourselves at such incredibly described heights of accomplishment. Literally and figuratively!

The reader can “see” and “feel” the cold, the harshness and fear of a dangerous climb. It serves as a metaphor for the author’s life and the importance of strong relationships, of mutual respect and trust necessary to reach new heights. What a metaphor a mountain becomes!

The author leads the reader through her early life, school, family relationships, romance and finally, in Chapter 17, the Peace Corps. Thus the start of a life of adventure, “becoming”, climbing, travel and finally fulfilling a life -long dream with her acceptance into medical school. A dream she had not thought possible, which is the start of a new phase that builds on all 33 chapters of the book, i.e. her life.

The author’s descriptions of various aspects of her journey are vivid and pulse with life that jump off the page. The closing chapters serve as testimony on how the Peace Corps experience can prepare a young person for the rest of their life. or at the very least, provide the platform from which to launch a long, dreamed about, career such as in medicine. Not just any practice in medicine,. . . but one that combines all she longed to do informed by the ups and downs of her life prior to being sought out and admitted to more than one medical school. That was just the beginning. . . once again!

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Reviewer Sue Hoyt Aiken (Ethiopia 1962-64) taught English at Haile Selassie First Secondary School in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She dropped into a culture thousands of years old with her 21-year-old mind and sheltered life experience.  She often questioned whether or not it was helpful to expose eager youthful minds to what existed outside their country.  She came to love her brief two-year service in Ethiopia and the impact it, its people, culture, and beauty has had and continues to have on her.