The vast majority of Hondurans would have never dared to set foot in Nueva Suyapa, a mountainside barrio that was under the thumb of a gang whose bravado and cruelty were the stuff of legend. But that is precisely where Kurt Ver Beek, an American sociologist, and Carlos Hernández, a Honduran schoolteacher, chose to raise their families. Kurt and Carlos were best friends who had committed their lives to helping the poor, and when they accepted that nobody else—not the police, not the prosecutors, not the NGOs—was ever going to protect their neighbors from the incessant violence they suffered, they decided to take matters into their own hands.
Fascinating ... This is an unexpected thriller starring a mild-mannered Christian from the midwest who teaches study-abroad students and runs an NGO ... Halperin tells the story with an immersive narrative voice.
It’s a compelling tale and the perfect doorway into the complex inner workings of the poorest country in Latin America ... While the best works of nonfiction bring their characters fully alive, the two men and their associates remain curiously distant and unknown ... The most important voices — those of the barrio itself, which are the ones we really came to hear in the first place — remain silent.
