North to paradise A memoir

In this astounding tale of courage and tragedy, Umar--founder of NASCO Feeding Minds, a nonprofit committed to improving the lives of Ghanaians--recounts the harrowing journey he endured immigrating to Europe from Ghana. "When we started out, there were forty-six of us. Only six survived," he writes at his story's outset, laying bare the scope of misfortune he encountered over five years, after leaving his remote village at age 12 with a group of migrants for a better life in Europe. Early on in their trip, though, their smugglers abandoned them, forcing Umar and the others to find their own way through the desert without food or water: "Whenever we were lucky enough to find moist sand, we grabbed fistfuls of it and squeezed it until a single drop fell on our lips." Even after making it out of the desert, brutal beatings and the cruelty of human traffickers became Umar's norm as he made his way to Casablanca en route to Europe. Still, with unerring humanity, Umar brings instances of light to his sobering tale through moving recollections of the friendships that bolstered him and moments of "divine intervention" that led him to finally find a new home in Spain. This is a stunning testament to the strength of the human spirit. (Mar.)

A Ghanaian social entrepreneur tells the story of his five-year journey across Africa to the "Promised Land" of Europe. As a child, Umar, who lives in Barcelona, dreamed of leaving his impoverished village for "the Land of the Whites," a place his elders believed was home to people who "lived like gods." At age 9, he left for a neighboring city to work as an apprentice in his uncle's body shop and then moved to the capital city of Accra. Seeing the "wondrous cargo" from European ships and watching TV for the first time reawakened the desire to "be white" and live in "Paradise." Exploited and underpaid by bosses and forced to work in often dangerous working conditions, Umar decided to take the advice of truckers he knew and go to Libya to earn a real salary. He traveled across West Africa, where he met "sinkers," migrants too poor to continue their journey north. "They can't afford to continue," writes the author, "and they can't afford to go home: stuck forever, like ghosts." Abandoned by a smuggler in the middle of the Sahara Desert, Umar found his way to Libya, where he earned enough money to pay other smugglers for passage through Algeria. Temporarily thrown into prison with other migrants, he managed to escape and continue on to Mauritania, where he made a dangerous journey to Spain by dinghy. His status as a minor allowed him to stay in Spain, where a series of fortuitous meetings led to his being adopted by a family in Barcelona. Umar later attended college, where he was inspired to use his education to help other Ghanaian youths seek a better life. Both sobering and inspiring, this story about a young African man's awakening to the realities of an often uncaring world offers a compelling portrait of humanity at its ignorant worst and enlightened best. A candid and provocative memoir from a determined man. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.