Strength in What Remains

That 63-year-old Tracy Kidder may have just written his finest work — indeed, one of the truly stunning books I’ve read this year [i.e. 2009] — is proof that the secret to memorable nonfiction is so often the writer’s readiness to be ­surprised. [...]

While reporting his 2003 best seller, “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” a fitfully earnest book about a character almost impossible to love too much — Dr. Paul Farmer, leader of a global campaign to eradicate preventable disease — Kidder stumbled across a spectral African refugee who had signed on with the doctor’s organization, Partners in Health, as a bit player, a guy helping out, answering e-mail, “performing any jobs that needed doing.” His name was Deogratias, or “thanks be to God” in Latin.

“Strength in What Remains” is Deo’s story. And what a tale it is, opening from a passenger seat in an airliner in war-torn Burundi, where Deo, then 24, is leaving behind what once seemed a promising life in Africa as a third-year medical student. It was 1994. Burundi and neighboring Rwanda were exploding in civil wars, in which Hutu and Tutsi were slaughtering one another in one of the 20th century’s most horrifying conflicts. With the help of the privileged family of one of his med-school friends, Deo is able to escape the carnage, bound for America.

If intrigued, here's the remainder of the NY Times review.