Description

The inspiring memoir of a Zulu nurse and healthcare activist who overcame seemingly insurmountable odds to lead a life of selfless service

Growing up poor in a rural village with a father who didn't believe in educating girls, Sister Abegail Ntleko earned her nursing degree and began work as a community nurse and educator, dedicating her life to those in need. As Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu writes in the forward of her memoir, her inspiring story demonstrates “what a single person can accomplish when heart and mind work together in the service of others.”

Overcoming poverty and racism within the apartheid South African system, Sister Abegail adopted her first child at a time when it was unheard of to do so. And then she did it again and again. In forty years she has taken in and cared for hundreds of children who had nothing, saving babies—many of them orphans whose parents died of AIDS—from hospitals that were ready to give up on them and let them die.

Empty Hands describes the harshness of Ntleko's circumstances with wit and wisdom in direct, beautifully understated prose and will appeal not only to activists and aid workers, but to anyone who believes in the power of the human spirit to rise above suffering and find peace, joy, and purpose.