Do I Really Want to Rewrite this? By Jane Wilson-Howarth

Way back in 2007, I was fortunate enough to see the publication, by Peir 9 in Australia, of my memoir A Glimpse of Eternal Snows. I’d been working on it off-and-on for 12 years. In essence the book was about David, our middle son who was born with various medical challenges including holes in his heart. He wasn’t expected to live a long and healthy life. Writing about him was an enormous, heart-rending struggle and often my confidence failed me. This was despite the fact that this was my fifth conventionally published book.

David’s doctors found him an intriguing case – and let me tell you, as a physician myself, being of interest to doctors is seldom a good thing. Fascinating syndromes and invasive treatments were discussed but, when he was five weeks old, and only after a lot of sole-searching, we took a difficult decision. We’d delay surgery, flee high-tech hospital wards and return to Nepal where my husband was working at the time. We needed time to absorb the situation and I wanted to try to fatten him up without disgusting calorie supplements and frightening nasogastric tubes he had in hospital. In the more relaxed atmosphere of Nepal, my own milk-production improved and he put on weight, defying some of his doctors’ gloomiest prognostications. As he grew, he fixed the holes in his heart and never needed cardiac surgery! This was terrifically, guilt-salving for us, even if his other problems continued to be a challenge. 

It was exhausting to revisit those early hospital weeks. There was a lot of emotion to download. Sometimes as I recalled those awful events, I experienced chest pain. Another author commented that the harder this was to write, the more powerful it would be to read. It would have been easy to write an angry book but I wanted to help others heal and put bitterness aside. 

Yet I was ambivalent about my target audience because it was really two books in one, all 432-pages of it. But an agent took me on and signed me up with the Australian publisher. My memoir fitted nicely into their genre Women Against the Odds, and it sold its entire printrun of 8000. 

Then the UK-based Bradt Travel Guides took it. They were cautiously moving beyond guide books and into travel narratives and in 2012 they launched a new, trimmer, illustrated edition of 390 pages. This iteration sold moderately well despite British bookshops and reviewers being uncertain whether to classify the book as travel writing or biography. Indeed, in November 2024 when I met up again with Hilary Bradt herself, she said I should rewrite it. I needed to pull out the family story and cut much of the traveller’s tales then it would find a bigger market and definitely become a best seller. ‘It will be easy,’ she said. ‘You’ve already written much of it.’

I’ve no idea why she said it would be easy to rework the story. She’s a writer herself must have known that you can’t produce a readable book by simply pulling fragments out of other texts. Hilary is a friend though – we’ve trekked together – and has faithfully encouraged my writing, so reluctantly I agreed to try.

I wrote the first 10,000 words and pitched to a few publishers, expecting rejection. Then I could tell Hilary I’d tried. In the event two independent publishers expressed interest and asked to see the entire typescript. Unexpectedly I was under pressure to do the entire rewrite; I was committed and dutifully settled down to work. 

By this time, much of my anger against the doctors who wouldn’t listen to us was spent. I’d also done a lot of healing since little David’s birth. This made it easier to write than first time around, but there were still places where I was again in physical pain as I tapped away at my keyboard. I was determined though to embrace this new chance to give David a voice and wanted it to be a helpful and uplifting read. I also wanted to empower other parents fight for their children as well as channel the anger, use it positively. And I wanted doctors to read our story and think about parents’ perspectives.

This book sings about the joy of raising little David and how he brought laughter into our lives again, and this, is what I hope I have managed to create in Under a Himalayan Sky. It launched on 17th September with Eye Books.

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Jane Wilson-Howarth is medically qualified and also trained in zoology; she’s a life-long wildlife nut. She’s lived and worked for 12 years in Nepal. Most recently, she’s been mentoring local young paramedics working in remote villages where one of her mentees declared, ‘Dr Jane speaks Nepali like a six-year-old!’

In addition to her new memoir, she’s published ten other books: three travel health guides, two travel narratives, a novel for adults and four wildlife-packed adventure stories for middle grade readers. She’s also contributed to several anthologies of travel writing, she’s written chapters in various medical texts as well as more than 200 travel health articles for lay readers.

When not writing, she may be seen out on her bicycle in Cambridge or with binoculars scanning for birds or other wildlife.

Website: https://www.wilson-howarth.com

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/259432.Jane_Wilson_Howarth 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/longdropdoc/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jane.wilsonhowarth/

Under a Himalayan Sky: A Story of Love, Loss and Learning to Live

When medicine offered only limits, a mother chose possibility…

When her son, David, was born with a severe heart condition, Dr Jane Wilson-Howarth faced a grim prognosis. Unwilling to subject him to a lifetime of needles, tube-feeds and medical cocktails that left him twitching at noises and vomiting after every feed, she made the difficult decision to take him out of the hospital system.

Rejoining her aid-worker husband in Nepal, she immersed David in a culture that viewed him not as abnormal but ‘touched by god’. Surrounded by Himalayan jungles and wildlife, he lived a profoundly joyful life, free from sterile wards and full of laughter.

In this powerful, uplifting memoir, Jane looks back on David’s short life of dignity and happiness, surer than ever that she made the right call.

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