Footprints in the Dust: Nursing, Survival, Compassion, and Hope with Refugees Around the World

Roberta Gately is a nurse and humanitarian aid worker who has aided refugees in war zones ranging from Sudan and Iraq to Kosovo and Afghanistan. Just the word refugee sparks conversation and fuels emotion. But who are these people? Images filter into our consciousness via dramatic photographs--but these photos only offer a glimpse into their stories. Footprints in the Dust aims to share the real stories of refugees around the world in hopes of revealing the truth about their experience.

As a young ER nurse in Boston, Roberta was stopped cold by stark images in the news of big-bellied babies with empty, haunting stares. Within two months, she was on her way to Afghanistan, but it was only the beginning. Roberta would soon learn that the world into which millions of children are born is fraught with unspeakable horrors. The only certainties for so many of these children were, and remain to this day, hunger, disease, and devastating injury.

But there is hope, courage, and inspiration, too. Footprints in the Dust reveals the humanity behind the headlines, beginning where the newscasters end their reports. The people we meet within Gately's riveting book are neither all saints nor all sinners--but they are impossible to forget.