SELECTED MEMORIES A Collection of Tales & Adventures From Travels Around the World

James Breivis, M.D.

ISBN 13: 978-1-58790-695-4 / 246 pages / paperback / 5.35”x 8” /photographs / color / $22

ABOUT THE BOOK

This book contains twenty-two independent chapters relating stories of the author’s adventures over more than fifty years of global travel.

Two perspectives are found in the book. One is that of the author’s personal adventures, with examples such as almost getting stuck in Iran with an expired visa, taking a nap with giraffes and zebras in South Africa, and a story of what can happen when getting a haircut where English is not spoken. He also relates his experiences of being a jury foreman in a murder trial, purchasing a goat in northern Kenya, and having a one-month-old baby teach him an important fact of life during a medical school teaching session.

The other perspective is that of the author’s interactions with locals in places like Cambodia, India, Bhutan and Syria, where he developed relationships of trust and acceptance with locals he met. In one chapter, he visits a northern India Hindu monkey temple with a devout follower whose unique temple offering would shock most Westerners. In another, he shares a Cambodian bird-watching guide’s narrative of avoiding certain death from the Khmer Rouge by hiding in the forest for over a year. Then there’s the drama of the Bhutanese peasant farmer who was mauled by a bear in the remote part of the country, and his lengthy and exhausting efforts to obtain assistance. The author interviewed him in the Thimphu Bhutan National Hospital.

Color photographs throughout the book provide added value to the reader. Favorites vary, but dramatic candidates include the body-pierced Hindu man at the Batu Caves in Malaysia, or the Aleppo alleyway scene with the boy defying gravity with his cart. The one with the author somehow smiling with a snake draped around his neck is begging for humorous captions.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jim Breivis, MD retired from the San Francisco Kaiser Permanente Medical Group in 1999. During his tenure he practiced general Orthopedics and served as Chief of the Orthopedics Department, Assistant Chief of Staff of the Medical Center. He was also very involved and in local, national and even international medically related organizations and efforts.

None of these stories were pre-planned. All were written as the situations arose and then simply tucked away, until the author’s friends urged him to put them into a book.

This collection of essays/stories is a treasury of thoughtful observation, at once wry and uncannily wise. Our author’s curiosity, plainspoken prose and tantalizing snapshots, allow us to accompany him on amazingly diverse geographical and cultural adventures!                                        — Judith Margolis

Artist / Essayist;

Creative Director, Bright Idea Books

REVIEWERE COMMENTS

I have known Jim Breivis for 50 years, first as a parent in my small school in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, and since then as a friend. I always have seen him as someone with a good memory for telling tales of years gone by, and as a person with a great sense of humor. Both qualities shine through in this memoir. His book takes the reader through numerous adventures that most of us only can imagine. I read through it all quickly as if it was an adventure of my own.                                   

— Steve Zolno

Author and Retired Healthcare Administrator

Readers will shiver in awe at Jim Breivis’s adventures. The author’s stories and color photos of people and places are so dramatic that readers will wonder whether such wildly different cultures will ever blend. Others will believe that, if humanity is to survive, those diverse cultures had better find a way to get along.. Most of us spend our lives doing deep career dives. Jim Breivis did that, and more. An orthopedic surgeon by profession, Jim spread his wings wide enough to see the world in his time off, large chunks of time he took without looking back. With Diane, his wife, Jim forged another life away from medicine, to which he always returned.. Fly with Jim and Diane as they hear a well sing in Kenya, read Jim’s toast to Diane in Bukhara on her birthday, help them track elusive tigers in India, and witness a piercing religious ceremony in Malaysia.. Jim didn’t have to range through jungles to witness the bizarre. It was next door in San Francisco. Sit with Juror-Jim at the murder trial of “Susie Q” in San Francisco’s superior court.and you may never leave home again.         

— Lou Salome

Friend, Classmate, Newspaperman, and Author