The most high-minded excuse for doing nothing is that the means with which to do it or the company you'd keep are flawed, the justification that you're keeping your hands clean (which is another way to say that you'll save only yourself). There are unambiguous realities in this book - the reality of poverty and of exploitation - but every situation still requires a tightrope-walker's balancing act: of pragmatism and idealism, of solidarity and independent-mindedness, of purposefulness and flexibility. And this is where the book becomes more than a conventional tale of an activist's evolution: spirituality, eventually in the clear form of Buddhism, enters in, and Buddhism itself offers the nonattachment, the recognition of ephemerality and the need to let go, the sense of life as an ever-moving river, that helps Marisa make sense out of all that she witnesses and does. At a very young age, she has gone very far. This book is an invitation to the rest of us to keep going.