Tuesday, Dec. 08, 2009

Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder

Tracy Kidder has a mysterious, almost psychic talent for inhabiting and communicating the drama of other people's lives. Here his subject is Deo, a refugee from Burundi who arrives in America with $200 in the mid-1990s and survives by delivering groceries and sleeping in Central Park. Kidder artfully sketches the incredible arc of Deo's life, from the atrocities of his homeland to Columbia University and ultimately to a career in medicine. It would be a miracle if it weren't so tragically, beautifully achieved by human kindness and persistence.