Refugees Among the Lines

Refugees Among the Lines tells the story of two remarkable Americans who, after their college choices failed them, set out to reclaim their lives by rebuilding others' lives, to move past guilt and regret to purpose. Paul Garrity and Abby Archer serve as refugee workers in the most wretched and dangerous camps in the world between 1978 and 1985. Both former prisoners--Paul in Vietnam and Abby in California--they attempt to make sense of a conflicted world and repay a debt, one not necessarily of their own making.

Volunteering with Catholic Relief Services to aid Vietnamese Boat People at the squalid refugee camps in Malaysia and Indonesia, Abby and Paul take on greater responsibilities and are hired by the United Nations HCR to help build and supervise camps along the perilous Thai-Cambodian border. Cambodians are desperately trying to survive a decade that began with an American bombing campaign and concluded in the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge. From Southeast Asia, their journey takes them to Central America where right-wing death squads are slaughtering Maya and Moskito Indians, to the Gaza Strip where Palestinians are controlled by decades-long Israeli occupation, and back to Chicago's poorest neighborhoods.

In the harsh world of Cold War regional conflicts that are unconcerned with the lives of the powerless and vulnerable, Paul's and Abby's commitment to ease the suffering of the unending lines of forgotten, desperate people is a tale of courage and inspiration.