This Is a Soul: An American Doctor's Remarkable Mission in Ethiopia

“A powerful, important book for our age.”

Passionately written by journalist Marilyn Berger, This is a Soul is the moving and inspiring story of Dr. Rick Hodes, an American doctor living in Ethiopia, who has devoted his life to caring for the sickest of the sick and the poorest of the poor. Dr. Hodes’s life and work makes for fascinating reading, especially for those who have been profoundly touched by Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains.

This unforgettable biography chronicles one man’s mission to heal the world, one person at a time.

• A Doctor’s Mission: Follow Dr. Rick Hodes from the suburbs of America to the heart of Addis Ababa, where he confronts unimaginable poverty and disease with unrelenting compassion.
• An Unconventional Family: Discover how Dr. Hodes’s home became a sanctuary for over twenty sick and abandoned children, five of whom he officially adopted as his own.
• Treating the Untreatable: Witness the fight to save children with complex illnesses like spinal tuberculosis and severe heart disease, cases often considered hopeless.
• Medicine on the Front Lines: Journey with Dr. Hodes into the refugee camps of post-genocide Rwanda, where he brought medical care to the front lines of a humanitarian crisis.
• A Story of Hope: For readers of Mountains Beyond Mountains, this is an unforgettable story of what one person can do to heal the world.

"Whoever Saves a Life, It Is Considered as If He Saved an Entire World"

Dr. Rick Hodes arrived in Africa more than two decades ago to help the victims of a famine, but he never expected to call this extremely poor continent his home. Twenty-eight years later, he is still there.

This Is a Soul tells the remarkable story of Rick Hodes's journey from suburban America to Mother Teresa's clinic in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. As a boy, Rick was devoted to helping those in need, and eventually he determined that becoming a doctor would allow him to do the most good. When he heard about famine in Africa, that's where he went, and when genocide convulsed Rwanda, he went into the refugee camps to minister to the victims. When he was told that Ethiopia was allowing its Jews to emigrate to Israel, he went to help. While there, he was drawn to Mother Teresa's mission in Addis Ababa. It was there that Rick found his calling when he began caring for the sickest children in one of the world's poorest countries. But he did more than that—he began taking them into his home and officially adopted five of them.

This Is a Soul is also a book filled with great joy and triumph. When Rick's kids return from surgery or life-saving treatments, he is exultant. "Seeing these people after surgery is like going to heaven," he says.

Marilyn Berger went to Africa to write about Dr. Hodes, but while there, she became involved with the story. When she came upon a small, deformed, and malnourished boy begging on the street, she recognized immediately that he had the exact disease Rick could cure. She took him to Rick, who eventually arranged for the boy to have a complicated and risky surgery, which turned out to be incredibly successful. The boy's story—intertwined with Rick's, and Marilyn's as well—is unforgettable in its pathos and subtle humor.

This Is a Soul is not just a story of the savior and the saved, it is a celebration of love and wisdom, and an exploration of how charity and devotion can actually change lives in an overcrowded, unjust, and often harsh world.

“Marilyn Berger’s story fulfills our dream that there still is caring in the world. Rick Hodes’ overwhelming devotion to saving children with little or no hope of survival is stirring. And, inspired by Rick, her own decision to save a child has transformed her life. The story she tells might transform yours.” - Alan Alda

“There isn’t a living physician whose life and quiet heroism I have admired more than the subject of this extraordinary book. Rick Hodes cares little if the world knows of his work, and yet he has much to teach the world about an empathic civilization, and how boundaries and nationhood are meaningless in the face of suffering. Marilyn Berger has more than done Rick’s story justice, avoiding hagiography, while giving us the Rick I know and love: the astute clinician, the incredible adoptive father of five children and unofficial father to so many more, the teacher, joker, scholar and most of all a man who quietly lives his faith. THIS IS A SOUL is a powerful, important book for our age.” - Abraham Verghese, author Cutting For Stone

“Dr. Rick Hodes’ life story is a reminder that giving is a privilege in which we may take pleasure, not some saintly endeavor. His approach toward medicine should be a model for our current Western system in showing that tending to the soul is at the center of healing. This is a Soul envelops the reader in Dr. Hodes’ indefatigable light and is an inspirational reading experience.” - Natalie Portman

“This is a miracle of a story! Marilyn Berger zeroes in on Ethiopia’s terrible poverty and social injustice, felt most acutely by defenseless children, while also revealing a remarkably deep vein of humanity. Dr. Rick’s heroic mission to come from America, not just to cure, but to provide a family for as many orphan children as he possibly can, is inspirational. And in a surprising twist, Berger’s own discovery and developing relationship with one of the little patients is deeply moving. A must read that will melt the heart!” - Christiane Amanpour