I'm sure some people will bypass this book because the subject is about the genocide in Burundi and Rwanda, which is not exactly relaxing reading material. (Actually I would have bypassed it too if I hadn't read a good review somewhere or other.) But it's also a true and wonderfully hopeful story of kindness and survival. Deogratias, who escaped from the genocide via an Aeroflot flight, spoke no English, had never been out of Burundi, and arrived in NYC alone with only his nightmarish memories and $200 in his pocket. The book slips back and forth between his life in the US and his life growing up in Burundi until the horrific civil war forced him to run. I'm still digesting this story ... it raises all kinds of questions and thoughts about cultures, good and evil, poverty, wealth, kindness to strangers, education ... it's a great book and well worth reading (so good in fact that I read it in one day.) ( )

Wow. What a story. I had never really read about the genocide in Rwanda and didn't know it occurred at the same time in neighboring Burundi. This book does so many things. It tells the story of the genocide. It tells the story of a modern day impoverished immigrant to the US, the story of what it is like to live in NY at the bottom end of the socioeconomic ladder. It is an honest and unflinching look at human nature as played out in the lives of many different people, especially Deogratias.
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Okay. But I prefer his other books more. ( )

A Tutsi medical student tells a grim story of the slaughter in Burundi. The events leading to his unlikely escape explain, as much as possible, the central African genocide of a decade ago. But that's only part of Tracy Kidder's tale. Equally daunting is how refugee Deo (only his given name is used) overcomes homelessness in New York, completes his medical studies and returns to Burundi, where he builds a clinic and ponders his deliverance. It's a common American story -- I've met a Congolese journalist who fled to become a Chicago janitor -- but few immigrants have a writer as skillful as Kidder to chart their tortuous route here.

The story of a young man from Burundi, who narrowly escaped death during a civil war and genocide there, who landed in New York and managed to make something of himself. But not easily. Not quickly. Deogratias (known simply as Deo) spent a long time on the streets, taking showers in apartments that were not his. He survived by working long hours at difficult, underpaid jobs, putting up with prejudice and worse.

Yet the angels smiled on him. That would be one way to look at it. A woman in a church was drawn to his story, to his personality. She was determined to find help for him, and in time she actually did. She found a safe place for him to live, with an educated couple who also saw promise in the young man. Through their help he found his way to college, to earning a medical degree, and finally to returning to his country to try to fulfill a lifelong dream there.

The story is of a remarkable man and of the remarkable persons who helped along the way. It is thus a story of hope in spite of the horrors, both in Burundi and New York.

The one other book I have read by Kidder is Mountains Beyond Mountains, the story of Paul Farmer, founder of Partners in Health, now an international organization dedicated to bringing good medical care to all parts of the world. What distinguishes both books from most biographies is the fact that Kidder becomes a friend, a close friend, to his subjects. In fact, it is probably his friendship with Farmer and his organization that led to his hearing the story of Deogratias and then befriending him. Kidder's approach is warm and sympathetic. He doesn't just tell the story from an arm's length. Rather, he's very much inside it.

Absorbing, at times horrifying, ultimately hopeful. I expect we will hear more of Deogratias. ( )