Though frankly evangelical, Davis’ book is still a refreshing read for those seeking the inspiration to follow the stirrings...
This moving debut memoir tells Davis’ story of moving to Uganda and founding Amazima ministries, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bettering the lives of underprivileged children.
As a teenager, the author found herself hungering for an out-of-the-box experience that would allow her to do “something incredible for God and others.” She researched opportunities at orphanages and discovered a Ugandan home for abandoned babies that needed volunteers. Over the Christmas holiday in 2006 and just six months before Davis graduated from high school, she “lost part of [her] heart to a place [she’d] never been before.” A pastor whom she met during the trip invited her to teach at a kindergarten he would soon be opening, and Davis accepted. While she knew she would be giving up what most young, upper-middle-class adults take for granted—a comfortable life, college and prospects for a good career—she didn’t yet realize how much her work would change her. Davis came to love the people and especially the children in her village as much (if not more than) the members of her own family. At 19, she adopted four homeless little girls; by the time she was 22, she had become mother to 10 more. Her personal sacrifices cut her to the bone but taught her that "to be real is to love and be loved until there's nothing left.” The profundity of this young author’s commitment to God and to going to “the hard places” is nothing short of remarkable.
Though frankly evangelical, Davis’ book is still a refreshing read for those seeking the inspiration to follow the stirrings of their own hearts.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-1206-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Howard Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
