I stumbled onto this book serendipitously, browsing on Amazon for books related to books related to some book on El Salvador that I’d enjoyed. From a literary standpoint it’s not exactly Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains, but in many ways Charles Clements reminds me of Paul Farmer. Clements takes us on a journey as he moves from enthusiastic military cadet, to disillusioned pilot, to medical student, to idealistic doctor trying to join the Guerilla movement in El Salvador. Eventually Dr. Clements joins the guerilla movement, doing his best to stick to his Quaker ideal of only doctoring to non-combatants, and within a few chapters he’s doing amputations with a Swiss Army knife and treating malaria with herbal teas. For anyone who wants to begin to understand the US-backed and senseless war, genocide, and general hell of the 1980s in central America, this book is a must-read.
This book can be found for $3.95 shipped at Thriftbooks.