About the Book
Dr. Mabel E. Elliott, an American physician, served in Turkey, Armenia, and Greece from 1919 to 1923, helping Armenian and Greek refugees and orphans following World War I. She saw unimaginable suffering and hunger while caring for thousands of refugees after the Armenian Genocide.
Rose Wilder Lane, journalist and novelist, worked for the American Red Cross and Near East Relief from 1919 to 1923. Dr. Elliott agreed to work on a book for Near East Relief and the two collaborated on a sweeping memoir that combined Dr. Elliott's diaries and letters with Rose Wilder Lane's research on Armenia and its history. The result was a book that became one of the best-known post-World War I memoirs. Lane is most remembered as Laura Ingalls Wilder's daughter, serving as editor for her mother's Little House series of books.
Dr. Elliott's engaging reports and letters were a publicity mainstay for the Near East Relief and American Women's Hospital organizations to help tell the refugee and orphan story to the American public. Dr. Elliott's Battle of Marash siege diary is a harrowing tale of her three-day trek leading Armenian refugees across mountains in a blizzard. Rose Wilder Lane wrote articles about Armenia and Greece for several American magazines, including Good Housekeeping, McClure's, and Asia.
Lane's collaboration with Dr. Elliott on her book was hidden for more than a century, uncovered during research for Dr. Elliott's 2025 biography, Unbreakable Healer. Lane's rumored "Armenia book," thought lost or never finished, had been found.
Dr. Elliott's forthright tales and Rose Wilder Lane's soaring prose make for a book that places the reader in the middle of America's efforts to care for refugees and orphans in Turkey, Armenia, and Greece a century ago.
About the Author :
Mabel Evelyn Elliott was born on February 8, 1881, in London, England, and immigrated with her family to the United States in 1883. She grew up in Florida and later attended St. Agnes School in Albany, New York. In 1904, she and her sister, Grace Elliott Papot, became among the first women to earn medical degrees from the University of Chicago's Rush Medical College.After an internship at Cook County Hospital, Elliott joined the American Women's Hospitals Service during World War I. In 1919, she ran a hospital for Armenian refugees in Marash, Turkey, surviving the city's siege and leading a perilous winter escape through the Taurus Mountains. She later directed refugee hospitals in Turkey and served in Soviet Armenia, organizing large orphan care programs.In 1922, Elliott became General Medical Director for the American Women's Hospitals in Greece, aiding refugees after the burning of Smyrna and receiving several Greek honors for her service. She returned to the U.S. in 1923 but soon moved abroad again, accepting a position in 1925 as head of public health at St. Luke's International Medical Center in Tokyo. She became the first American woman physician licensed in Japan and rose to chief of pediatrics.Elliott returned to the U.S. in 1941, later working with returning World War II missionaries. She spent her later years in Florida, continuing to practice medicine in semi-retirement. She died in West Palm Beach on June 13, 1968, at age 87. Rose Wilder Lane was born on December 5, 1886, in De Smet, Dakota Territory, the only surviving child of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Almanzo Wilder. Exceptionally bright, she completed three years of Latin in one and, after high school, trained as a telegrapher and worked with Western Union across Missouri, Indiana, and California.In 1909, she married Gillette Lane. The marriage ended in divorce by 1915, and she never remarried. Her journalism career began at the San Francisco Bulletin, where she wrote serial biographies of Henry Ford, Charlie Chaplin, and Jack London, and later ghost-wrote memoirs for figures such as Chaplin and Ford.After moderate success as a novelist, her fortunes declined with the 1929 crash. She returned home and encouraged her mother to turn Pioneer Girl into a series of children's books. That effort became Little House in the Big Woods, the first of the beloved Little House series. Though she downplayed her role, Lane is widely credited with shaping and editing the books.In the 1940s and '50s, Lane became a prominent political writer and thinker. Her 1943 work The Discovery of Freedom helped lay the foundation for the modern American libertarian movement, alongside the writings of Isabel Paterson and Ayn Rand. She mentored Roger Lea MacBride, who later inherited her literary estate.Lane traveled widely throughout her life, even reporting from Vietnam in 1965. She died peacefully in her sleep on October 30, 1968, at age 81, shortly before a planned three-year world tour. G. L. PEDERSEN was born in Florida and raised on the stories of pioneer days. She writes about real people, particularly the women whose lives are too often left out of the historic record. She uncovers their stories in old letters, newspapers, and archives that time almost buried, bringing them forward so they will not be forgotten. Two award-winning books authored with Janet M. Naughton shed new light on Palm Beach County history. In Pioneering Palm Beach, they told the unknown story of author Byrd Spilman Dewey. In The Crystal Ball Chronicles, they followed the trail of murdering poet and postmistress Lena Clarke. Now, in Unbreakable Healer, Pedersen tells the story of Dr. Mabel E. Elliott, a pioneering physician and medical missionary whose fearless service from the battlefields of postwar Turkey and Greece to the orphanages of Armenia and the hospitals of Japan saved thousands of lives. Dr. Elliott witnessed some of the twentieth century's greatest humanitarian crises. G. L. Pedersen resides in Florida among palms, pineapples, and bananas, always looking for the next mission.
