When its colonial era ended in the late 20th Century, the departing British left power in the hands of the Muslim northerners. The people of the rural south, Animist Christians, soon found themselves victims of a never-ending civil war.

Their villages came under attack without warning, since these were folk without any modern communications. Sometimes their attackers killed indiscriminately. At other times the enemy took the women and girls for the slave market, killed the men, and asked the young boys one by one: "Are you a Christian?"

Any boy who refused to deny or renounce his faith was executed on the spot. Soon neighboring Ethiopia, and later Kenya, teemed with refugees including many "unescorted minors" who had no family left, or no knowledge of what might have happened to their parents and siblings.

Author Hecht came to know some of these "lost boys" grown into young manhood, after a relatively few lucky ones were chosen for resettlement in the United States and brought to her home town of Jacksonville, Florida. Hesitant at first because of vast cultural differences and a thoroughly confusing language barrier, Hecht nevertheless found herself drawn into these young men’s lives until she became "Mom" to many of them. She tells their individual stories with a mother’s understanding and tenderness, but provides historical background and other context in crisp, factual prose. She also provides pages of photographs that add immeasurably to the book’s effectiveness.

Hecht writes without illusions, making no pretense of being a scholar or journalist. She simply tells the world in general, and prosperous North American readers in particular, about people she has dedicated her life to helping. Everything that the book lacks in polish, it makes up for with its heartfelt message. If this one’s closing chapter doesn’t make you cry, nothing written ever will!