Always troubled by “the logic behind the attitude that the poor had chosen their condition–or that their condition was God’s will” when writing about poverty, prejudice and discrimination in this country­he was especially moved by what he saw after visiting Haiti with a church group in 1996. Returning there in 2006 and 2008, and once again in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, he resolved to tell the story of “people and a place [he] cared about,” and to demonstrate how much people living in both societies had in common despite their linguistic, cultural, religious and economic differences.