Called for Life

June 8, 2015
Kent Brantly, the first American to contract and survive Ebola, tells his story in riveting detail; his wife, Amber, provides a kind of support harmony, relating her role as anguished spouse half a world away from her critically ill husband. The Brantlys were medical missionaries in Liberia—he a doctor and she a nurse—when Ebola erupted in West Africa in early 2014. Kent contracted the disease from a patient. The Brantlys’ narrative provides a little personal history to help readers know them and understand their motivations (which are related to their faith) for working in Liberia, but the bulk of their story focuses on the epidemic and Kent’s own illness, told in unvarnished detail with pacing that approaches a medical thriller. His survival raises medical, ethical, and theological questions; the mortality rate for infected Africans is far higher than for American medical personnel working with them. Brantly himself reflects on the meaning of his survival. Only one of his patients, a young boy, did not succumb to the disease. It’s a page-turner that should also get readers thinking about God and the meaning of compassion.