There Is No Me Without You: One Woman's Odyssey To Rescue Africa's Children by Melissa Fay Greene

This is the book that is causing me to rethink my life and try to decide if I am living a meaningful life. Am I doing enough good or should I sell my possessions, move to Africa or India and dedicate my life to something more useful than having a socially conscious job and owning a home.

Haregewoin Teferra was a middle class woman in Ethiopia, a professional woman with an husband who was a teacher and two beautiful and beloved daughters. After her husband passes away she raises her daughters to adulthood. After one of her daughters contracts AIDS and dies, Haregewoin goes into mourning, believing her life is over. Her priest comes to her with a baby that has been orphaned by AIDS and starts her on a journey that transforms her life. She now runs an orphanage that is inundated with the children of the AIDS epidemic.

This is a appalling story of the utter waste of human life that the world has let continue long after successful treatments had been discovered to slow the disease and even reverse it in infants. It is also heartbreaking how painful death is for the millions of adults and children that have contracted the disease. The numbers of dead or dying are almost incomprehensible but threaded through it all is the reality that one person can make a difference.

This is a compelling story where facts are interspersed with personal stories of children that are alive, well and even in some cases, thriving because someone dared to ignore the stigma of AIDS to give these children a home and a chance. Better yet, it is also well researched and well written.

Behold The Many by Lois-Ann Yamanaka

Behold the Many is set in Hawaii and is the story of Leah, the child of a Portuguese father and Japanese mother. When she and two younger sisters get tuberculosis they are sent to a Catholic orphanage to recover but are, for all intents and purposes, abandoned. After the two sisters die, Leah is visited by her sister's ghosts, all of the other children who died at the orphanage and most horrifyingly her incredibly abusive father who continues to molest his ghost children. These ghosts continue to haunt her into adulthood and when she starts to miscarry she slowly loses touch with the love in her life.

This was an incredibly painful book to read and will stay with me for a long time. The characters in this novel are so tortured that it is easy to believe that they are cursed even into the afterlife.