Popular All Else Failed

In 2015, increasing numbers of refugees and migrants, most of them fleeing war-torn homelands, arrived by boat on the shores of Greece, setting off the greatest human displacement in Europe since WWII. As journalists reported horrific mass drownings, an ill-prepared and seemingly indifferent world looked on. Those who reached land needed food, clothing, medicine and shelter, but the international aid system broke down completely. In a way that no one could have anticipated, volunteers arrived to help. Dana Sachs’s compelling eyewitness account weaves together the lives of seven individuals and their families – including a British coal miner’s daughter, a Syrian mother of six, and a jill-of-all-trades from New Zealand – who became part of this extraordinary effort. The story of their successes, and failures, is unforgettable and inspiring, and a clarion call for resilience and hope in the face of despair. War had shattered people’s lives. This is what happened next.

Dana Sachs is a journalist, activist and author living in Wilmington, North Carolina. Her books include non-fiction narrative The Life We Were Given: Operation Babylift, International Adoption, and the Children of War in Vietnam (2010). She is the co-author, with Nguyen Nguyet Cam and Bui Hoai Mai, of Two Cakes Fit for a King: Folktales from Vietnam (2003) and co-translator of numerous Vietnamese short stories into English.In 2016, Dana co-founded Humanity Now: Direct Refugee Relief, a U.S.-based non-profit that raises money to fund grassroots aid projects aimed at helping improve the lives of the tens of thousands of displaced people in Greece.