The Skimmer

Strength in What Remains By Tracy Kidder; Random House; 277 pages

The nightmare started with silence: one fall morning in 1993, none of the doctors at the Burundian hospital where Deogratias Niyizonkiza worked showed up. War had erupted, forcing the promising medical student to embark on a harrowing flight through the bloodstained hills of Burundi and Rwanda. Armed with a ticket bought by a friend's father, he boarded a plane to New York City--where he arrived with no English, no contacts and just $200 in his pocket. Facing hunger, homelessness and heavy odds, the young refugee--propelled by the kindness of strangers--rose from the streets to Columbia University in two short years. It's a true story, and one that Kidder, the Pulitzer Prize--winning author of Mountains Beyond Mountains, crafts into a tale of unspeakable barbarism and unshakable strength. Once he crosses paths with his protagonist, Kidder's narrative loses steam, but he still manages to evoke Deo's sense of dislocation and--especially for a man with "some authority to speak about evil"--his extraordinary capacity for forgiveness.

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