When Powers, fresh out of a Ph.D. program in international relations, arrived in Liberia in 1999, sent by an international aid agency “to fight poverty and save the rainforest,” he faced a daunting task. The second-poorest country in the world, Liberia had just begun to emerge from seven years of civil war and was “environmentally looted, violence scarred, and barely governed.” Even major cities lacked electricity, running water and postal service; garbage lay uncollected in the streets, schoolteachers were barely literate and the economy worked largely on bribes. The government of Charles Taylor enriched itself through illicit trade in conflict diamonds, protected timber and weapons, while terrorist militias acted at whim.” It’s all just so brutal,” Powers confided to his girlfriend, almost ready to quit after his first year. Yet he stayed on, and this eloquent memoir shows why he found this troubled country so difficult to leave.
—Publishers Weekly, starred review