Arroyo Book Club Pick for October….

The Arroyo Book Club will be reading Tracy Kidder’s Strength in What Remains for our October meeting.  This book tells the story of a man who came to America from Burundi in search of a new life.  Let me quote directly from the booklist review to give you a quick little book summary: 

Deo was a young medical student in 1994 when ethnic tensions between Hutu and Tutsi in Burundi elevated to the level of massacres. He spent six months on the run from the Hutu militia, saved by a Hutu woman who claimed he was her son, and later he made his way to New York, saved by a former nun who helped him find housing and other assistance. In the first half of the book, Kidder recalls Deo's struggles as an illegal immigrant, working for poverty wages and sleeping in abandoned buildings, crack houses, and Central Park, all the while recovering from severe trauma and longing for a university setting. Through benefactors, Deo goes on to graduate from Columbia University and to attend medical school at Dartmouth. Eventually working with a nonprofit organization that provides health care in impoverished nations, Deo returned to Burundi to build a clinic. The second half of the book is Kidder's recollections of accompanying Deo on his return trip home, a frightening journey of remembrances. Kidder uses Deo's experiences to deliver a very personal and harrowing account of the ethnic genocide in East Central Africa

Pick up a copy of the book at the library and join us on October 26 at 3:00 for a discussion.