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Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness
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Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness
Unavailable
Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness
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Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

Tracy Kidder, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of the bestsellers The Soul of a New Machine, House, and the enduring classic Mountains Beyond Mountains, has been described by the Baltimore Sun as the "master of the non-fiction narrative." In this new book, Kidder gives us the superb story of a hero for our time. Strength in What Remains is a wonderfully written, inspiring account of one man's remarkable American journey and of the ordinary people who helped him-a brilliant testament to the power of will and of second chances.

Deo arrives in America from Burundi in search of a new life. Having survived a civil war and genocide, plagued by horrific dreams, he lands at JFK airport with two hundred dollars, no English, and no contacts. He ekes out a precarious existence delivering groceries, living in Central Park, and learning English by reading dictionaries in bookstores. Then Deo begins to meet the strangers who will change his life, pointing him eventually in the direction of Columbia University, medical school, and a life devoted to healing. Kidder breaks new ground in telling this unforgettable story as he travels with Deo back over a turbulent life in search of meaning and forgiveness.

An extraordinary writer, Tracy Kidder once again shows us what it means to be fully human by telling a story about the heroism inherent in ordinary people, a story about a life based on hope.


From the Hardcover edition.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateAug 25, 2009
ISBN9780739383384
Unavailable
Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness

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Reviews for Strength in What Remains

Rating: 3.984184909002433 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Strength in What Remains was at the same time both difficult to read and hard to put down. The graphic violence that Deo, the main character, lived through and witnessed in Burundi and Rwanda was what I found the hardest to read but I didn't feel it was gratuitous. In fact, as horrific as it was, this is actually a portrait of the goodness and strength in the human spirit (both his and others) and I felt it was ultimately a hopeful book. A reminder of what humans can be capable of, needed more than ever these days...
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Deo's tale is a remarkable one, and Kidder's craft is exceptional. If you are a high school teacher looking for nonfiction for your students, this book is an excellent choice.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Difficult to listen to the subject matter occasionally, but a really good book. Excellent narrator. Reminiscent of Sinclair's "The Jungle", exposing the dark underbelly of immigrants trying to make it in the USA. Highly reommend.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A remarkable story of survival and human potential, and also of joy. A story of coping with truly unimaginable experiences. Deo, the main person in this true story shines brilliantly for all of us, in so many important ways. The book also speaks to human nature, to "herding" and "stampeding" instincts, as I like to call them, when people don't know exactly what's going on but they think if everyone else is doing it, they should get on board. That's rarely a sane thing to do and in this case, it's devastating and eye-opening.

    The book silently asks all of us to examine our beliefs, prejudices, actions, thoughts and so much more. One of the few ways humans can learn to live in harmony and not stampede with those who won't is to educate ourselves about humanity and wisdom, about what makes sense and what doesn't and why. We should all read more books like this one. Don't herd or stampede yourself into a place you can't recover from, if you have a choice. Not everyone has a choice, but if more people would think instead of act like robots, maybe we'd have a little less pain and death.

    This moving story is told in an unsentimental fashion by a master, and a brave one at that.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I had no idea what this book was about, or had forgotten if I did, but I like Tracy Kidder so I may have bought it for that reason, I can't remember. I'd had it for quite a while before getting around to reading it. It was a pleasant experience. I really like stories of survival and people who excel against all odds. I also like it when random people cross someone's path and they reach out to help their fellow man out of unselfishness and love.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This story of a refugee, Deo, from the genocide in Burundi starts off really strongly. I thought it would be one of the best books of the year, but it does lose some of its pizazz before it ends. Nonetheless, it is a riveting story of one man's escape from an African civil war through a flight to New York City, where he landed with $200 and no English skills. Within two years he had enrolled at Columbia University, from which he eventually graduated. He then went to medical school at Dartmouth but had not yet finished med school at the time of the book's publication. It's an incredible story and well worth the time it takes to read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Tells the story of Deo, who arrives in America after surviving the genocide in Burundi.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I do love a Tracy Kidder story. The details almost don't matter. He knows how to make even the most boring come to life. This story about African poverty and survival told through the eyes of one man was mostly not boring but did lag here and there and was saved by the Kidder touch.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This was a rough subject, but the author did a great job of letting us into the hard life of the main character. I guess my only "minus" was that I would have preferred if the book was written really chronologically.! I had heard much about the genocide in Rwanda, but was totally unfamiliar with the murdering happening in Burundi.....it was heart breaking to hear about all the horrors.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Okay. But I prefer his other books more.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Burundi is one of the poorest countries in the world, but the misery suffered by its population goes well beyond profound poverty. As is well known, both Burundi and the neighboring country of Rwanda had gruesome civil wars in the late 1990s. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in fighting between the two main ethnic groups in these countries, the Hutu and the Tutsi. ?Strength in What Remains? is the story of Deogratias?or ?Deo??a young Burundi medical student and a Tutsi. When the Burundi war breaks out in 1994, Deo escapes to New York with $200 in his pocket and finds work as a grocery store delivery clerk. Living on the street, he almost gives up in despair, but he befriends a politically active nun who finds him a home in Lower Manhattan with an older, childless couple, who later pay his way through Columbia. Deo subsequently finds work with the global health organization founded by Paul Farmer, the subject of one of Kidder?s earlier books, ?Mountains Beyond Mountains.? With the experience he gains at PIH, Deo eventually returns to Burundi to build a health clinic there.Tracy Kidder?s true story of Deo?s life has two parts. The first part tells Deo?s story from the time he is a small child to the time he graduates from Columbia and starts to work at PIH. It?s powerful, indeed frequently overwhelming. But the second half of the problem is problematic. Here Kidder describes the trip he took with Deo back to Burundi, to retrace the path Deo?s took while escaping the violence and to make plans for the health clinic. Reading this section recalls watching a Michael Moore movie: you just wish that Moore would get back behind the camera and make his movie, without inserting himself into it, and the same seems true of Kidder. His reactions to the killing fields of Burundi aren?t what should matter, and yet there he is telling you about his inability to feel the appropriate feelings. There?s also another problem with the second half of the book: sometimes it seems that Kidder has forgotten what he already wrote. For example, one of the most memorable moments in Deo?s experience occurs when he?s been on the run for weeks, and, exhausted, is about to give up just short of the Rwandan border. A Hutu woman sees him, coaxes to keep moving, and lies the border police saying that he is her son, in order to save him. Kidder tells this story in detail, in the first half of the book, writing: ??I?m too tired,? [Deo] told the woman. ?I?m just going to stay here.? ?No, no,? she said. ?The border, it?s nearby.??. In the second half, when they revisit the scene, Kidder describes a conversation he has with Deo: ??What was it you told her?? I asked over the noise of the plane. Gazing out, Deo replied ?I?m too tired. I?m just going to stay here.? And she said ?No, no. It?s not too far to the border.?? I happened to read this book shortly after reading Chimamanda Ngozi?s ?Half the Yellow Sun,? a fictional account of a different African civil war: the Nigerian war that predated Burundi?s by about 30 years. Both books pack an emotional wallop, but somehow Ngozi?s fiction had immediacy for me that Kidder was approaching in the first part of his book, but upset in the second.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is the remarkable story of Deo, a man who survived the horrific violence of 1993 in not only Burundi but Rwanda as well. Trying to escape the political upheaval between Tutsi and Hutu, Deo fled into Rwanda only to find infighting and ethnic cleansing there as well. Finally, with $200 to his name he was able to escape to New York City where he found work as a grocery delivery boy. Earning only $15 a day he lived in Central Park to make ends meet. It was after he delivered groceries to a nun when Deo's life drastically changed. Through her generosity Deo was able to meet a middle aged couple who essentially took him in as their own; a quasi-adoption, if you will (his parents had survived the genocide so he was not a legal orphan). They gave him a place to live but more importantly, once they found out he had been a medical student in Burundi they helped put him through school at Columbia, majoring in biochemistry and philosophy. Remarkable, considering he didn't have a green card or visa of any kind. What's even more remarkable is that Deo not only went on to become a doctor, but he found forgiveness and went back to his homeland to start a clinic.I liked Kidder's direct, never-wavering sense of storytelling. Compared to Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson, Kidder maintains a linear language and nothing is off-topic. It's as if he knows he is limited to only so many words to tell the story and he doesn't want to waste a single one on superfluous detail.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I wanted to like this book more than I did. I have lots of admiration for Deo and everything that he has overcome, and I learned a lot about the history of Burundi and Rwanda. I only give it three stars because I didn't feel that engaged while I was reading it. I think that was my fault though, not the fault of the book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Difficulties for immigrants are abundant, but for Deogratias Niyizonkiza, a medical student who arrived in New York from the horrors of Burundi and Rwanda in the 1990s, they are magnified to what seems insurmountable heights. The situation was further complicated by language. Deo spoke French, his English learned from a phrase book. In his first job delivering groceries, he politely said "Hi" to customers and wondered why the response was strange. It wasn't until much later he discovered his French pronunciation expressed the greeting as "Hee". Kidder opened the story in New York where the reader is shocked, but has some understanding of the situation Deo faced. Then, going back to earlier events of civil war and genocide in Burundi and Rwanda, we can see why this young man struggled so hard to get his life back on track. In places Deo's story was heart-breaking beyond words, both in America and in Africa. His perseverance and diligence is inspiring. Still, Kidder omits his reason for writing Deo's story. Is this an immigrant success story or an account of the harrowing events in Burundi and Rwanda? It appears to be neither one nor the other. By combining both, the impact is significantly diminished.This was an audiobook narrated by the author, the narration being the weakest part of the book. Unless an author has a good reading voice, it's advisable to hire a professional for the job.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is the third book by Tracy Kidder I have read, the others being Mountains Beyond Mountains (read 20 Feb 2005) and The Soul of a New Machine (read 1 Oct 2007). The title of this book is taken from words by Wordsworth in Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood. It tells of Deo, who was a Burundian and had a horrific time in 1993 avoiding being killed. That account is the most exciting and best part of the book. Deo manages to escape to New York , where he arrives alone, knowing no English and no person. His time in New York seems almost as scary as his time in Burundi, but he is exceptioally lucky in that he is befriended by an ex-nun and a couple she knows. Their beneficial attention to him seems almost surreal but makes one most admratory of them. The account of Deo's trips back to Burundi I found less attention-holding. While Deo is very brainy he does do things which did not strike me as very sensible, though praiseworthy. I thought Kidder's book, Mountains Beyond Mountains, was a better book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Burundi is one of the poorest countries in the world, but the misery suffered by its population goes well beyond profound poverty. As is well known, both Burundi and the neighboring country of Rwanda had gruesome civil wars in the late 1990s. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in fighting between the two main ethnic groups in these countries, the Hutu and the Tutsi. “Strength in What Remains” is the story of Deogratias—or “Deo”—a young Burundi medical student and a Tutsi. When the Burundi war breaks out in 1994, Deo escapes to New York with $200 in his pocket and finds work as a grocery store delivery clerk. Living on the street, he almost gives up in despair, but he befriends a politically active nun who finds him a home in Lower Manhattan with an older, childless couple, who later pay his way through Columbia. Deo subsequently finds work with the global health organization founded by Paul Farmer, the subject of one of Kidder’s earlier books, “Mountains Beyond Mountains.” With the experience he gains at PIH, Deo eventually returns to Burundi to build a health clinic there.Tracy Kidder’s true story of Deo’s life has two parts. The first part tells Deo’s story from the time he is a small child to the time he graduates from Columbia and starts to work at PIH. It’s powerful, indeed frequently overwhelming. But the second half of the problem is problematic. Here Kidder describes the trip he took with Deo back to Burundi, to retrace the path Deo’s took while escaping the violence and to make plans for the health clinic. Reading this section recalls watching a Michael Moore movie: you just wish that Moore would get back behind the camera and make his movie, without inserting himself into it, and the same seems true of Kidder. His reactions to the killing fields of Burundi aren’t what should matter, and yet there he is telling you about his inability to feel the appropriate feelings. There’s also another problem with the second half of the book: sometimes it seems that Kidder has forgotten what he already wrote. For example, one of the most memorable moments in Deo’s experience occurs when he’s been on the run for weeks, and, exhausted, is about to give up just short of the Rwandan border. A Hutu woman sees him, coaxes to keep moving, and lies the border police saying that he is her son, in order to save him. Kidder tells this story in detail, in the first half of the book, writing: “’I’m too tired,’ [Deo] told the woman. ‘I’m just going to stay here.’ ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘The border, it’s nearby.’”. In the second half, when they revisit the scene, Kidder describes a conversation he has with Deo: “’What was it you told her?’ I asked over the noise of the plane. Gazing out, Deo replied ‘I’m too tired. I’m just going to stay here.’ And she said ‘No, no. It’s not too far to the border.’” I happened to read this book shortly after reading Chimamanda Ngozi’s “Half the Yellow Sun,” a fictional account of a different African civil war: the Nigerian war that predated Burundi’s by about 30 years. Both books pack an emotional wallop, but somehow Ngozi’s fiction had immediacy for me that Kidder was approaching in the first part of his book, but upset in the second.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Kidder has a real knack for bringing real life heroes to light—people who quietly go about making a difference in the world. How someone like Deo can survive the warfare in his home country of Burundi, arrive in the US, speaking only French and end up graduating from college is a story of determination and courage. Add to that his determination to go back to Burundi and make a difference in the health care system is amazing. Thank you Mr. Kidder for allowing me to meet such a remarkable world citizen
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Another remarkable book from Tracy Kidder. This story of a Burundian medical student first fleeing the violence at home and then returning home to address the root causes of suffering and conflict, disguises nothing about the poverty, the violence and the suffering of a young refugee. Great book!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    An inspiring, moving memoir of a genocide survivor's painful journey of putting his life back together.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Arriving in New York city with only $200, no friends and no work qualifications might seem a bit overwhelmingly destitute. But not if you are running from genocide. Well, I take that back. Both situations just downright suck. The consolation is that Deo, the main character, prevails through it so that he can go back to his country and build a medical clinic.

    I remember sitting in my car in the parking lot at school at 6:45am unable to move while listening to Deo's dreadful plight through poverty in New York city. I'm glad I wasn't starting my day when I got to the part where Kidder recounts Deo's escape from Burundi.

    Wonderfully written with tons of profundity.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The story of Deo who survives civil war in Burundi and Rawanda, comes to the United States, survives the initial homeless life in NYC and ends up attending Columbia Medical School and building a clinic back in Burundi. A story of success, survival, PTSD and hopefulness.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Told in alternating chapters, this is the story of Deo, a refugee who barely escapes from the Burundi and Rwanda Genocide of 1994. Kidder starts the story on Deo’s plane ride away from Africa and towards New York City. You know something bad has happened and anyone knowing the region and the date would know about what is going on. Kidder doesn’t touch on that very much at first. He talks about Deo’s adjustment in the United States and the contrast with his growing up in Burundi. Something about this story came off muffled for me. This was the first time I have read a Tracy Kidder book and was expecting an inspirational story, but his voice seemed to get in the way of Deo’s story. Instead of Deo’s voice, I sometimes heard the voice of someone a little condescending about another culture and that seemed to distract me through much of the book. The first half of the book is like this, but it is only when Kidder tells of Deo’s escape from Burundi, does the reader realize the depth of this amazing story. Kidder describes Deo’s escape from Burundi. He walked for miles while listening to the cries of Tutsis being slaughtered around him. He assumes his family has been killed and on the advice of a friend, takes a flight to New York to escape the carnage of the genocide. An interesting note, whereas the Rwanda genocide was stopped by the Rwanda Patriotic Front, in Burundi, the civil war, referred to as The Crisis, went on for years after. In Rwanda, the people began to evolve past the Hutu/Tutsi distinction, but Burundi did not. Even after a decade there was still uncertainty to Deo’s safety when he returned to the area. It’s Deo’s dedication to return that makes the story so powerful. Anyone would run away from such horror and never want to return. Deo wanted to return, and rebuild it. He successfully builds a clinic near his hometown to help those unable to afford medical care. That last part of the story overcomes the shaky beginning to tell Deo’s inspirational story. It’s his light against the darkness that makes this story so great.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Bio of Deogratias, native of Burundi, political refugee, Columbia undergrad, med student, physician. Then back to Africa, all against incredible odds. After reading this, I admired what he accomplished, but I felt I didn't know him very well, nor did I particularly like him.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Tracy Kidder is one of my favorites and this book does not disappoint. It is a good companion to Mountains Beyond Mountains. In this book, Kidder relates the story of Deo and his remarkable emergence from the Hutu and Tutsi atrocities in Burundi and Rwanda.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    It's a good story, and a compelling one, too, but Tracy Kidder is an artist and this book does not showcase his best writing. In some ways, I think Kidder does a better job finding the beauty in otherwise mundane objects than he does here, providing a backdrop for a very dramatic scene.If you are new to Kidder, pick up _Soul of a New Machine_, _Among Schoolchildren_, or _Home Town_.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Strength in What Remains is an unlikely story about an unreasonable man. Deo was a young medical student who fled the genocidal civil war in Burundi in 1994 for the uncertainty of New York City. Against absurd odds--he arrived with little money and less English and slept in Central Park while delivering groceries for starvation wages--his own ambition and a few kind New Yorkers led him to Columbia University and, beyond that, to medical school and American citizenship. That his rise followed a familiar immigrant's path to success doesn't make it any less remarkable, but what gives Deo's story its particular power is that becoming an American citizen did not erase his connection to Burundi, in either his memory or his dreams for the future. Writing with the same modest but dogged empathy that made his recent Mountains Beyond Mountains (about Deo's colleague and mentor, Dr. Paul Farmer) a modern classic, Tracy Kidder follows Deo back to Burundi, where he recalls the horrors of his narrow escape from the war and begins to build a medical clinic where none had been before. Deo's terrible journey makes his story a hard one to tell; his tirelessly hopeful but clear-eyed efforts make it a gripping and inspiring one to read. --Tom Nissley
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Deogracias came to New York in the 1990s with little money and no English. He was from Burundi, a country in Africa near Rwanda, and had run for his life during the genocide between Hutus and Tutsis in both countries. Kidder recounts a dual narrative of how Deo survives in New York, and how he survives and escapes the uprising in his home country.I hadn't planned on reading this book, exactly. Strictly speaking, Home Town is the only book by Tracy Kidder currently on my TBR list, though his name has been on my radar as a good nonfiction author ever since I read Mountains Beyond Mountains. So when I saw this on my library's audiobook shelves, I decided to give it a listen on my commute. The book is read by the author, which made especially those parts in which Kidder is in the narrative feel more immediate, but also meant he didn't always have the delivery an actor or reader might, so it took a little getting used to. Deo's story is an incredible story of survival - not just physically, but also how he mentally survived what must have been absolute horror to witness. I couldn't help but cringe at some of the experiences he had in Burundi, Rwanda, and New York. I sometimes thought that Kidder became somewhat repetitive in the second half of the book, repeating stories that he'd already told. (This feeling was only helped by a quirk of the CDs and my car - there was no "end of Disc 1" or introduction with each CD, so when my car stereo started a CD over from the beginning automatically, I sometimes didn't catch it until several minutes into the first track.) This was a challenging read that has given me much food for thought and a definite need to learn more about Burundi and Rwanda in the 1990s.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Burundi is one of the poorest countries in the world, but the misery suffered by its population goes well beyond profound poverty. As is well known, both Burundi and the neighboring country of Rwanda had gruesome civil wars in the late 1990s. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in fighting between the two main ethnic groups in these countries, the Hutu and the Tutsi. “Strength in What Remains” is the story of Deogratias—or “Deo”—a young Burundi medical student and a Tutsi. When the Burundi war breaks out in 1994, Deo escapes to New York with $200 in his pocket and finds work as a grocery store delivery clerk. Living on the street, he almost gives up in despair, but he befriends a politically active nun who finds him a home in Lower Manhattan with an older, childless couple, who later pay his way through Columbia. Deo subsequently finds work with the global health organization founded by Paul Farmer, the subject of one of Kidder’s earlier books, “Mountains Beyond Mountains.” With the experience he gains at PIH, Deo eventually returns to Burundi to build a health clinic there.Tracy Kidder’s true story of Deo’s life has two parts. The first part tells Deo’s story from the time he is a small child to the time he graduates from Columbia and starts to work at PIH. It’s powerful, indeed frequently overwhelming. But the second half of the problem is problematic. Here Kidder describes the trip he took with Deo back to Burundi, to retrace the path Deo’s took while escaping the violence and to make plans for the health clinic. Reading this section recalls watching a Michael Moore movie: you just wish that Moore would get back behind the camera and make his movie, without inserting himself into it, and the same seems true of Kidder. His reactions to the killing fields of Burundi aren’t what should matter, and yet there he is telling you about his inability to feel the appropriate feelings. There’s also another problem with the second half of the book: sometimes it seems that Kidder has forgotten what he already wrote. For example, one of the most memorable moments in Deo’s experience occurs when he’s been on the run for weeks, and, exhausted, is about to give up just short of the Rwandan border. A Hutu woman sees him, coaxes to keep moving, and lies the border police saying that he is her son, in order to save him. Kidder tells this story in detail, in the first half of the book, writing: “’I’m too tired,’ [Deo] told the woman. ‘I’m just going to stay here.’ ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘The border, it’s nearby.’”. In the second half, when they revisit the scene, Kidder describes a conversation he has with Deo: “’What was it you told her?’ I asked over the noise of the plane. Gazing out, Deo replied ‘I’m too tired. I’m just going to stay here.’ And she said ‘No, no. It’s not too far to the border.’” I happened to read this book shortly after reading Chimamanda Ngozi’s “Half the Yellow Sun,” a fictional account of a different African civil war: the Nigerian war that predated Burundi’s by about 30 years. Both books pack an emotional wallop, but somehow Ngozi’s fiction had immediacy for me that Kidder was approaching in the first part of his book, but upset in the second.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    difficult, not as good as mountain beyond mountans
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Deogratias is a man without a country. Escaping from the genocides in Burundi and Rwanda, Deo is put on a plane to NYC with $200, no English skills, and knowing no one in America. Sleeping first in an abandoned building in Harlem, then in Central Park, Deo works 12 hour days delivering groceries for $15 a day. A long way to fall for a talented medical student. But Deo has luck, the uncanny ability to be in the right place at the right time, and a penchant for making friends with those who can help him. After years of hard work, Deo has learned to control his debilitating fears, has become part of a new family, and is ready to return to his country and help others.The first part of the book, Flights, is Deo's memoir. I found it to be an amazing story, by turns depressing and uplifting. The second part of the book, Gusimbura, is the author's interpretation of Deo's life and ambitions. Although the story continues (Kidder accompanies Deo on a trip to Burundi and Rwanda), the story is now superimposed by a conscious narration. I was immediately distracted and less engaged with the story.My first introduction to Tracy Kidder was his blockbuster Mountains Beyond Mountains. I was impressed then, and now, with Kidder's ability to "live" an interview--to follow someone for days, months, even years to get a sense of who they are and what they believe. I think he conveys as real a sense of the person as is possible without it being an autobiography. That said, I do find a bit too much Kidder present, almost as though he can't completely give up the stage to his subject. Personally, I would recommend reading the first part of the book and simply skimming the second.