Probably like many Americans, reading about genocide in Africa was not high on my list of things to do this summer. With wars still raging overseas and a recession at home, it’s hard to understand why people, especially college students, should bother to read about terrible events that are now safely in the past and seemingly far away.

I didn’t quite know the answer until I finished Tracy Kidder’s searing story of loss, sacrifice and, ultimately, redemption, in Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness.

Unless you have taken a class with required reading on the subject, the 1994 Rwandan genocide is not something you may know much about.

I came to this book with very little knowledge about what had transpired there. Reading about one man’s real-life struggle humanized the statistics that come with the genocide we sometimes hear about, far too casually, in the news.

In Kidder’s book, readers encounter the simultaneously horrifying and amazing tale of Deogratias (literally, “thanks be to God”), or “Deo,” for short, a medical student from a large Tutsi family who made a pulse-pounding escape to New York City in May 1994, some six months after genocide erupted in his country, Burundi, that boarders Rwanda.

Arriving in the city with $200, no English and a smile, Deo battles poverty, language and cultural barriers, loneliness, depression and grisly nightmares.

One thing leads to another, and he finds himself encountering a series of people who begin to help him.

First, a kindly older couple (a retired professor and his artist wife) take him in, giving him a safe place to stay, and then, by turns, Deo finds himself enrolled in Columbia University; he then makes it into medical school again, first at Harvard, then at Dartmouth.

Along the way, he discovers that his parents have, in fact, survived, and Deo starts to come to terms with the horrors he has witnessed — among them, the gruesome murder of most of his family, including his younger brothers and his grandfather.

Some of his memories — and they are recounted in detail — will make you sick to your stomach. The closest thing I can think of reading about is the Holocaust and its survivors.

Kidder structures his narrative into two parts; the first focuses on Deo’s arrival and initial life in New York, while the second is an extended look back on Deo’s time in Burundi, followed by his more recent visits home. Along the way, there is an interesting tie to Kidder’s profile of public-health pioneer Paul Farmer (in Mountains Beyond Mountains, the 2006 UW Common Book), whom Deo meets and eventually works for.

The author does his job admirably, telling Deo’s sometimes convoluted tale gently and accurately. There are some helpful “historical notes” in the back of the book to help orient the reader to the complex geopolitical and ethnic forces at work in Burundi and Rwanda. One flaw in the book is the lack of a map.

I won’t spoil the ending, but let’s just say that Deo has a lot of guts and is currently doing some very impressive things back in Burundi. Deo’s story will remind you that you have it pretty good. Seeing how one man endured so much mindless hate, and chose not to hate in return, was both humbling and encouraging.

His story helped me put the economic recession and the anxiety of getting a job into perspective. With that in mind, this is not a casual or easy read, but it’s necessary.

Reach Opinion Editor Will Mari at arts@dailyuw.com.