Angel of the Garbage Dump Hanley Denning pulled thousands of children out of the desperate Guatemala City garbage dump and gave them a Safe Passage. Maine-native Hanley Denning saw poverty and desperation in its ugliest form, and refused to turn a blind eye. A former track star at Bowdoin College, Denning was struck by what she saw at the Guatemalan City dump: garbage pickers competing with vultures for the food dumped by trucks, toddlers playing amidst rats. The experience prompted her to, as Mother Teresa said, "find her own Calcutta." Hanley called her family in New England and asked them to sell everything she owned and wire her the money. Then, she launched an educational reinforcement nonprofit called Safe Passage, or "Camino Seguro," and helped pull thousands of children out of one of the largest urban landfills in the Americas. Denning was killed in a car accident outside the Guatemalan capital in 2007, but Safe Passage continues to change countless lives today. Guatemala City overwhelms with its crowded, harsh and even hellish realities, its endless varieties of human cruelty and corruption. But it is also home to beauty and innocence, humble and brave human endurance, resilience and generosity. An observant and compassionate writer, Jacob Wheeler is impressively up to conveying all that he encounters. The story he tells here, of the unlikely heroic young American angel and her collaborators, will alternately make your heart and mind glow with hope, but also painfully wrench them. I felt the majestic yet modest shadow of the young George Orwell rustling through pages of this beautifully written, remarkable book." _FRANCISCO GOLDMAN, Guatemalan-American bestselling author Hanley Denning's story is filled with practical magic, brought to warm, vivid life by Jacob Wheeler's reporting and storytelling. It's a handbook, too.

ISBN: 9781958363164