The following guest post is from author Greg R. Taylor who spent months conducting interviews for his latest book, Lay Down Your Guns, which tells the compelling, true story of Dr. Amanda Madrid and her efforts to curb the violent acts of drug cartels in her native Honduras. You can follow Greg on Twitter and learn more about him on his blog. As always, free copies of Lay Down Your Guns are available to book bloggers.

I love stories about a person who changes the world because God and the world has changed that person.

I’ve been honored to witness and write a story called Lay Down Your Guns about a person like that–perhaps the most courageous person I’ve ever met.

Lay Down Your Guns begins by showing Dr. Amanda Madrid in action in the mountain jungles of Central Honduras, where she has confronted drug traffickers to rescue the clinics her organization has worked so hard to establish in the last quarter century.

After chapters of introduction to the doctor’s life work in Catacamas, Honduras, we go back in time to Amanda’s childhood in the 1950s, to see how a leader like Amanda was born and raised.

The story progresses through childhood stories, tragedies, and challenges of medical school, decisions, and triumphs along the way to becoming a leader of a large non-profit organization that has established medical clinics, one of the first substance abuse centers in Honduras, and worked in public health.

When Amanda was in medical school in Tegucigalpa, she never imagined she would have to fend off drug cartels from infiltrating her clinics in the mountains, but over the past few years that’s exactly what she’s had to do. The story–which reads like a novel but is true–reaches a climax when Dr. Madrid goes into the mountains to stand between two feuding clans in a village war fueled by drug money and weapons.

This is the story about the life of a Honduran doctor heartbroken about the many killings and bad medicine of cartels–and what she decides to do about it. Can the same kind of love and prayer she gives her patients also cause these violent men to lay down their guns?

I’m very happy to answer your questions about the book here or at my web site: www.gregtaylor.org.