Keeping Hope Alive One Woman: 90,000 Lives Changed

The moving memoir of one brave woman who, along with her daughters, has kept 90,000 of her fellow citizens safe, healthy, and educated for more than 20 years in Somalia. Dr. Hawa Abdi, "the Mother Teresa of Somalia," and a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, is the founder of a massive camp for internally displaced people located a few miles from war-torn Mogadishu, Somalia. In 1983 she founded a one-room clinic to offer medical care to those living outside of the city, but then in 1991, the Somali government collapsed, famine struck, and aid groups fled. Since then she has dedicated herself to providing help for people whose lives have been shattered by violence and poverty. Her hospital grew to over 400 beds, she built a school, and her 13,000 acres of farmland turned into a camp that has numbered about 90,000 displaced people at its largest, mostly women and children. She has raised her children in the midst of one of the world's most devastating humanitarian crises and inspired her two daughters, Deqo, 37, and Amina, 34, to become doctors. Today this brave trio works side by side, treating an average of 500 people a day. Both a warrior and a nurturer, Dr. Abdi's story of incomprehensible bravery and perseverance will inspire readers everywhere.

Dr. Hawa Abdi, a Somalian human rights activist, lawyer, and doctor, specializing in gynecology, founded the Doctor Hawa Abdi Foundation, which runs a hospital and school in one of the largest internally displaced persons camps in the country, offering sanctuary to nearly 90,000 people. Glamour named her "Woman of the Year" in 2010 and dubbed her and her daughters "the Saints of Somalia, equal parts Mother Teresa and Rambo." She was featured as one of the top "Women Who Shake the World" in Newsweek in 2011, was interviewed by Tina Brown at the 2011 Women in the World Summit, and has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.