Author Tracy Kidder first meets Dr. Paul Edward Farmer while covering the United States military’s mission in 1994 to reinstate Haiti’s democratically elected government after a three-year military junta. After getting a flat tire near an American compound, Farmer asks Special Forces Captain Jon Carroll about a recent political beheading. He is critical about the business-favoring economic reforms the United States wants to implement and the military’s decision to release brutal sheriff Nerva Juste in a country with no working legal system. Leadership orders hamstring Carroll’s mission, however, and he feels that holding Juste without evidence would be hypocritical.

While Farmer’s local knowledge and “downright cocky” nature impress Kidder, he doesn’t think much of the doctor until they share a flight back to the United States. Farmer clarifies facts for Kidder’s article and corrects the author when he suggests that the beheading is related to the Voodoo religion. Farmer is a graduate of Harvard Medical School with a doctorate in anthropology who treats patients in central Haiti and works four months of the year in Boston. As years pass, Kidder donates to Farmer’s charity but is reluctant to write about his extreme vision of “doing one’s best” for destitute regions (8).