The Voluntourist - A Six-Country Tale of Love, Loss, Fatherhood, Fate, and Singing Bon Jovi in Bethlehem (Electronic book text)

VOL-UN-TOUR-ISTn. 1. A guy who attempts to save the world in an attempt to save himself. 2. Someone who can only do it two weeks at a time.

When Ken Budd was thirty-nine, his father collapsed after eighteen holes of golf. Ken and his wife raced to the hospital--but it was too late. In the weeks that followed, as grieving friends revealed how his father had changed their lives, Ken started questioning his own life--and admitting, after years of denial, that he and his wife would never have children.

And then, still struggling with grief--his grief at losing his father, his grief at not being a father--Ken received an e-mail with the subject line: "Katrina Relief Volunteer Opportunities." He signed up. He went to New Orleans. And he kept volunteering: Costa Rica, to teach English; China, to work with special-needs children; Ecuador, to study climate change; the West Bank, to assist refugees; Kenya, to care for orphans. His goal: to find purpose by helping others, one trip at a time.

Wry, funny, and heartbreakingly honest, The Voluntourist will linger in your mind long after you've turned the last page.