A Cruel Paradise: Journals of an International Relief Worker

These are the journals of Leanne Olson, a Canadian nurse who for four years worked in war zones around the world, delivering medicine in Bosnia, supporting rural hospitals in Africa, providing aid to people in need. She was one of the first foreigners on the scene of the Mokoto massacre in Zaire, where more than a hundred people were killed by machete-wielding Hutus. She spent one Christmas pinned down by Serbian heavy artillery with a troop of Bangladeshi UN peacekeepers. She immunised thousands of children in rural Liberia. And she has witnessed the quick progress of ethnic cleansing, watching one village after another wiped off the face of the earth. More than a compendium of atrocity, this book is the story of one woman making a difference in people's lives and how these events changed her own life profoundly. This book horrifies, enthrals, and ultimately heartens. It is a story of an ordinary person in extraordinary circumstances.