Review

“In this excellent work, Pulitzer Prize—winner Kidder immerses
himself in and beautifully explores the rich drama that exists in
the life of Dr. Paul Farmer…Throughout, Kidder captures the almost
saintly effect Farmer has on those whom he treats.”

-Publisher’s Weekly, starred review

“[A] Skilled and graceful exploration of the soul of an
astonishing human being.”

-Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“A fine writer and his extraordinary subject: Tracy Kidder, in
giving us Paul Farmer, lifts up an image of hope–and challenge–that
the world urgently needs. Simply put, this is an important book.”
-James Carroll, author of Constantine's Sword

“The central character of this marvelous book is one of the most
provocative, brilliant, funny, unsettling, endlessly energetic,
irksome, and charming characters ever to spring to life on the
page. He has embarked on an epic struggle that will take you from
the halls of Harvard Medical School to a sun-scorched plateau in
Haiti, from the slums of Peru to the cold gray prisons of Moscow.
He wants to change the world. Certainly this luminous and powerful
book will change the way you see it.”—Jonathan Harr, author of A
Civil Action

“A profoundly inspiring and important book about one of the truly
great men of our time.” —Ethan Canin, author of Carry Me Across the
Water

“Here is a genuine hero alive in our times. Mountains Beyond
Mountains unfolds with the force of gathering revelation. Like all
of Tracy Kidder’s books, it is as hard to put down as any good and
true story.”—Annie Dillard, author of The Writing Life

“Mountains Beyond Mountains is the only book I’ve read in years
that made me feel like cheering. It left me uncomfortable, guilty,
and exhausted—but it also inspired me, kept me up all night, and
moved me to tears. Some readers will find their lives changed
forever; everyone else will emerge, at the very least, with an
unexpectedly revised set of values. Tracy Kidder has given us not
only an unforgettable book but an unignorable life lesson. Hurrah!”
—Anne Fadiman, author of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall
Down

“Rarely has idealism fared so well on the planet as in Tracy
Kidder’s eloquently reported Mountains Beyond Mountains. One is
tempted to call Paul Farmer’s passionate sensibilities and loving
ambitions otherworldly, but only in sadness that there are too few
of him in the world. Kidder has provided us all, as the Farmerites
say, with a road map to decency, and such an endowment is beyond
measure.” —Bob Shacochis, author of Easy in the Islands

"Is there anything Tracy Kidder can't do? This is a beautiful
book, and a masterful one. Even better, Mountains Beyond Mountains
is a page-turner that will crack your conscience open." -Stacey
Schiff, author of Vera

“An incredible story about an incredible man told by an
incredible writer. Mountains Beyond Mountains is the sort of book
that makes you want to buy a hundred copies and pass them out like
a street corner evangelist. It's the sort of book that will affect
your life in a profound way. In a good way.” -Thom Jones, author of
The Pugilist at Rest

“Saints are notoriously difficult people, but who knew one could
be so funny, so utterly charming, and finally so deft in
accomplishing that most impossible of all job
de*ions--changing the world? Tracy Kidder's spellbinding story
presents us with an unlikely saint and finally, with inspiration so
compelling it makes the usual cynicism about global change seem
indulgent foolishness.”

-Patricia Hampl, author of A Romantic Education

From the Hardcover edition.

“[A] masterpiece.”—USA Today

“Inspiring, disturbing, daring and completely absorbing.”—New
York Times Book Review

“Stunning. Mountains Beyond Mountains will move you, restore your
faith in the ability of one person to make a difference in these
increasingly maddening, dispiriting times. [Kidder has] held his
writer’s mirror up to an astonishing comet of a man whose
reflection flatters us all for what it says about our capacity for
mercy and healing.”—San Diego Union-Tribune

“Easily the most fascinating, most entertaining and, yes, most
inspiring work of non-fiction I’ve read this year.”—San Jose
Mercury News

“It’ll fill you equally with wonder and hope.”—People

“If I ever go on a retreat again, this is the kind of book I’d
like to take for spiritual reading. . . . [Kidder] knows it is
impossible to live like Farmer, but the impossibility is the very
thing that can somehow give us life.”—Washington Post Book
World

“In this excellent work, Pulitzer Prize—winner Kidder immerses
himself in and beautifully explores the rich drama that exists in
the life of Dr. Paul Farmer…Throughout, Kidder captures the almost
saintly effect Farmer has on those whom he treats.”—Publishers
Weekly, starred review

“[A] Skilled and graceful exploration of the soul of an
astonishing human being.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“A fine writer and his extraordinary subject: Tracy Kidder, in
giving us Paul Farmer, lifts up an image of hope–and challenge–that
the world urgently needs. Simply put, this is an important book.”
-James Carroll, author of Constantine's Sword

“The central character of this marvelous book is one of the most
provocative, brilliant, funny, unsettling, endlessly energetic,
irksome, and charming characters ever to spring to life on the
page. He has embarked on an epic struggle that will take you from
the halls of Harvard Medical School to a sun-scorched plateau in
Haiti, from the slums of Peru to the cold gray prisons of Moscow.
He wants to change the world. Certainly this luminous and powerful
book will change the way you see it.”—Jonathan Harr, author of A
Civil Action

“A profoundly inspiring and important book about one of the truly
great men of our time.” —Ethan Canin, author of Carry Me Across the
Water

“Here is a genuine hero alive in our times. Mountains Beyond
Mountains unfolds with the force of gathering revelation. Like all
of Tracy Kidder’s books, it is as hard to put down as any good and
true story.”—Annie Dillard, author of The Writing Life

“Mountains Beyond Mountains is the only book I’ve read in years
that made me feel like cheering. It left me uncomfortable, guilty,
and exhausted—but it also inspired me, kept me up all night, and
moved me to tears. Some readers will find their lives changed
forever; everyone else will emerge, at the very least, with an
unexpectedly revised set of values. Tracy Kidder has given us not
only an unforgettable book but an unignorable life lesson. Hurrah!”
—Anne Fadiman, author of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall
Down

“Rarely has idealism fared so well on the planet as in Tracy
Kidder’s eloquently reported Mountains Beyond Mountains. One is
tempted to call Paul Farmer’s passionate sensibilities and loving
ambitions otherworldly, but only in sadness that there are too few
of him in the world. Kidder has provided us all, as the Farmerites
say, with a road map to decency, and such an endowment is beyond
measure.” —Bob Shacochis, author of Easy in the Islands

"Is there anything Tracy Kidder can't do? This is a beautiful
book, and a masterful one. Even better, Mountains Beyond Mountains
is a page-turner that will crack your conscience open." -Stacey
Schiff, author of Vera

“An incredible story about an incredible man told by an
incredible writer. Mountains Beyond Mountains is the sort of book
that makes you want to buy a hundred copies and pass them out like
a street corner evangelist. It's the sort of book that will affect
your life in a profound way. In a good way.” -Thom Jones, author of
The Pugilist at Rest

“Saints are notoriously difficult people, but who knew one could
be so funny, so utterly charming, and finally so deft in
accomplishing that most impossible of all job de*ions—changing
the world? Tracy Kidder's spellbinding story presents us with an
unlikely saint and finally, with inspiration so compelling it makes
the usual cynicism about global change seem indulgent
foolishness.”—Patricia Hampl, author of A Romantic Education

Chapter 1

Six years after the fact, Dr. Paul Edward Farmer reminded me, “We
met because of a beheading, of all things.”

It was two weeks before Christmas 1994, in a market town in the
central plateau of Haiti, a patch of paved road called Mirebalais.
Near the center of town there was a Haitian army outpost–a concrete
wall enclosing a weedy parade field, a jail, and a mustard-colored
barracks. I was sitting with an American Special Forces captain,
named Jon Carroll, on the building’s second-story balcony. Evening
was coming on, the town’s best hour, when the air changed from hot
to balmy and the music from the radios in the rum shops and the
horns of the tap-taps passing through town grew loud and bright and
the general filth and poverty began to be obscured, the open sewers
and the ragged clothing and the looks on the faces of malnourished
children and the extended hands of elderly beggars plaintively
saying, “Grangou,” which means “hungry” in Creole.

I was in Haiti to report on American soldiers. Twenty thousand of
them had been sent to reinstate the country’s democratically
elected government, and to strip away power from the military junta
that had deposed it and ruled with great cruelty for three years.
Captain Carroll had only eight men, and they were temporarily in
charge of keeping the peace among 150,000 Haitians, spread across
about one thousand square miles of rural Haiti. A seemingly
impossible job, and yet, out here in the central plateau, political
violence had all but ended. In the past month, there had been only
one murder. Then again, it had been spectacularly grisly. A few
weeks back, Captain Carroll’s men had fished the headless corpse of
the assistant mayor of Mirebalais out of the Artibonite River. He
was one of the elected officials being restored to power. Suspicion
for his murder had fallen on one of the junta’s local
functionaries, a rural sheriff named Nerva Juste, a frightening
figure to most people in the region. Captain Carroll and his men
had brought Juste in for questioning, but they hadn’t found any
physical evidence or witnesses. So they had released him.

The captain was twenty-nine years old, a devout Baptist from
Alabama. I liked him. From what I’d seen, he and his men had been
trying earnestly to make improvements in this piece of Haiti, but
Washington, which had decreed that this mission would not include
“nation-building,” had given them virtually no tools for that job.
On one occasion, the captain had ordered a U.S. Army medevac flight
for a pregnant Haitian woman in distress, and his commanders had
reprimanded him for his pains. Up on the balcony of the barracks
now, Captain Carroll was fuming about his latest frustration when
someone said there was an American out at the gate who wanted to
see him.

There were five visitors actually, four of them Haitians. They
stood in the gathering shadows in front of the barracks, while
their American friend came forward. He told Captain Carroll that
his name was Paul Farmer, that he was a doctor, and that he worked
in a hospital here, some miles north of Mirebalais.

I remember thinking that Captain Carroll and Dr. Farmer made a
mismatched pair, and that Farmer suffered in the comparison. The
captain stood about six foot two, tanned and muscular. As usual, a
wad of snuff enlarged his lower lip. Now and then he turned his
head aside and spat. Farmer was about the same age but much more
delicate-looking. He had short black hair and a high waist and long
thin arms, and his nose came almost to a point. Next to the
soldier, he looked skinny and pale, and for all of that he struck
me as bold, indeed downright cocky.

He asked the captain if his team had any medical problems. The
captain said they had some sick prisoners whom the local hospital
had refused to treat. “I ended up buyin’ the medicine
myself.”

Farmer flashed a smile. “You’ll spend less time in Purgatory.”
Then he asked, “Who cut off the head of the assistant mayor?”

“I don’t know for sure,” said the captain.

“It’s very hard to live in Haiti and not know who cut off
someone’s head,” said Farmer.

A circuitous argument followed. Farmer made it plain he didn’t
like the American government’s plan for fixing Haiti’s economy, a
plan that would aid business interests but do nothing, in his view,
to relieve the suffering of the average Haitian. He clearly
believed that the United States had helped to foster the coup–for
one thing, by having trained a high official of the junta at the
U.S. Army’s School of the Americas. Two clear sides existed in
Haiti, Farmer said–the forces of repression and the Haitian poor,
the vast majority. Farmer was on the side of the poor. But, he told
the captain, “it still seems fuzzy which side the American soldiers
are on.” Locally, part of the fuzziness came from the fact that the
captain had released the hated Nerva Juste.

I sensed that Farmer knew Haiti far better than the captain, and
that he was trying to impart some important information. The people
in this region were losing confidence in the captain, Farmer seemed
to be saying, and this was a serious matter, obviously, for a team
of nine soldiers trying to govern 150,000 people.

But the warning wasn’t entirely plain, and the captain got a
little riled up at Farmer’s denunciation of the School of the
Americas. As for Nerva Juste, he said, “Look, that guy is a bad
guy. When I do have him and the evidence, I’ll slam him.” He
slapped a fist into his hand. “But I’m not gonna stoop to the level
of these guys and make summary arrests.”

Farmer replied, in effect, that it made no sense for the captain
to apply principles of constitutional law in a country that at the
moment had no functioning legal system. Juste was a menace and
should be locked up.

So they reached a strange impasse. The captain, who described
himself as “a redneck,” arguing for due process, and Farmer, who
clearly considered himself a champion of human rights, arguing for
preventive detention. Eventually, the captain said, “You’d be
surprised how many decisions about what I can do here get made in
Washington.”

And Farmer said, “I understand you’re constrained. Sorry if I’ve
been haranguing.”

It had grown dark. The two men stood in a square of light from
the open barracks door. They shook hands. As the young doctor
disappeared into the shadows, I heard him speaking Creole to his
Haitian friends.

I stayed with the soldiers for several weeks. I didn’t think much
about Farmer. In spite of his closing words, I didn’t think he
understood or cared to sympathize with the captain’s
problems.

Then by chance I ran into him again, on my way home, on the plane
to Miami. He was sitting in first-class. He explained that the
flight attendants put him there because he often flew this route
and on occasion dealt with medical emergencies on board. The
attendants let me sit with him for a while. I had dozens of
questions about Haiti, including one about the assistant mayor’s
murder. The soldiers thought that Voodoo beliefs conferred a
special, weird terror on decapitation. “Does cutting off the
victim’s head have some basis in the history of Voodoo?” I
asked.

“It has some basis in the history of brutality,” Farmer answered.
He frowned, and then he touched my arm, as if to say that we all
ask stupid questions sometimes.

I found out more about him. For one thing, he didn’t dislike
soldiers. “I grew up in a trailer park, and I know which economic
class joins the American military.” He told me, speaking of Captain
Carroll, “You meet these twenty-nine-year-old soldiers, and you
realize, Come on, they’re not the ones making the bad policies.” He
confirmed my impression, that he’d visited the captain to warn him.
Many of Farmer’s patients and Haitian friends had complained about
the release of Nerva Juste, saying it proved the Americans hadn’t
really come to help them. Farmer told me he was driving through
Mireba- lais and his Haitian friends were teasing him, saying he
didn’t dare stop and talk to the American soldiers about the murder
case, and then the truck got a flat tire right outside the army
compound, and he said to his friends, “Aha, you have to listen to
messages from angels.”

I got Farmer to tell me a little about his life. He was
thirty-five. He had graduated from Harvard Medical School and also
had a Ph.D. in anthropology from Harvard. He worked in Boston four
months of the year, living in a church rectory in a slum. The rest
of the year he worked without pay in Haiti, mainly doctoring
peasants who had lost their land to a hydroelectric dam. He had
been expelled from Haiti during the time of the junta but had
sneaked back to his hospital. “After the payment,” he said, “of an
insultingly small bribe.”

I looked for him after the plane landed. We talked some more in a
coffee shop, and I nearly missed my connecting flight. A few weeks
later, I took him to dinner in Boston, hoping he could help make
sense of what I was trying to write about Haiti, which he seemed
glad to do. He clarified some of the history for me but left me
wondering about him. He had described himself as “a poor people’s
doctor,” but he didn’t quite fit my preconception of such a person.
He clearly liked the fancy restaurant, the heavy cloth napkins, the
good bottle of wine. What struck me that evening was how happy he
seemed with his life. Obviously, a young man with his advantages
could have been doing good works as a doctor while commuting
between Boston and a pleasant suburb–not between a room in what I
imagined must be a grubby church rectory and the w...