Tears of Salt

At a time when our broken world seems to be encouraging, and lauding, the worst of humanity, along comes the remarkable Dr. Bartolo to show us what courage, integrity, and compassion look like. His life is a manual of what it means to be human.--Rabih Alameddine Through Dr. Bartolo we understand that it is impossible to do nothing in the face of such great human need. Dr. Bartolo's spare, poignant, angry account of his life as doctor to the refugees arriving on the shores of Italy is an unusual and important addition to the growing literature of migration. Anyone wanting to understand the disaster of what is happening around us should read this book.--Caroline Moorehead There is great hope and poignancy here. Moving [and] impassioned. . . . [Bartolo] has written a powerful condemnation of public inertia to foreign tragedies. Heart-wrenching and relevant.--Marion Winik Tears of Salt tells the story of people who flee war or poverty in Africa or Asia, survive lethal months and years of travel, then cross the Mediterranean to become the 'refugees' we see in the news briefly--if at all. Dr. Bartolo tells us about rescuing everyone he can, burying those he cannot, and saving their stories as if they were his own. This is a personal, urgent, and universal book.--Gloria Steinem Tears of Salt is a tender personal memoir of a fisherman's son turned doctor on the rocky island of Lampedusa, where Dr. Bartolo is at once the savior and the coroner to boatload after boatload of migrants who risk everything to cross the deadly seas. It is also a damning indictment of the broader, collective indifference of humankind to both the drowned and the saved.--Philip Gourevitch

Pietro Bartolo was born in Lampedusa to a family of fishermen. He returned to Lampedusa after getting his medical degree, and has been running the island's lone clinic since 1991. He was featured in Gianfranco Rosi's celebrated documentary film Fire at Sea, a finalist for the Academy Award. Lidia Tilotta is a journalist with RAI Regional News and Mediterraneo.