When Haregewoin Teferra's husband and twenty-three-year-old daughter died within a few years of each other, her middle-class life in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, was shattered. Bereft and with little to live for, Haregewoin became a recluse. Her self-imposed exile was interrupted when a priest delivered first one, then another, orphaned child into her care. To everyone's surprise, the children thrived, and so did Haregewoin. As word spread, children of all ages began to appear at the door of her modest, tin-walled compound. Haregewoin's home became known as the rare place where AIDS-stricken parents and grieving families could safely leave their children. Soon Haregewoin was caring for sixty children, running an unofficial orphanage and day school, and learning firsthand about her country's and her continent's greatest challenge: the AIDS pandemic that is leaving millions of children without parents to care for them.