Amy Biehl's Last Home

Steven D. Gish is a professor of history at Auburn University at Montgomery. His previous books include Alfred B. Xuma: African, American, South African and Desmond Tutu: A Biography. He has traveled widely in South Africa since the 1980s and has interviewed key figures in the antiapartheid movement, including Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Desmond Tutu, Trevor Huddleston, and Beyers Naudé.

"Gish's fine book tells Biehl's story warmly and well and also provides an uplifting account of how her parents dealt with her loss and have since engaged in an elaborate reconciliation with South Africa and their daughter's assailants.…Summing up: Essential." (CHOICE) "If ever there was a book for our time, this is it. Amy Biehl's story is painful and inspirational, and Steven D. Gish has captured both in his extraordinary recounting of Biehl's journey. While some may struggle to fathom why this young white scholar chose to walk alongside South Africans on their often-dangerous path to democracy, Gish's masterful book provides answers in her own words and those of others who understood her passion and her commitment. Amy Biehl's Last Home is a book that can and should inspire us all." "I knew both the author and the subject of this book from a Stanford class in African politics. As a black South African, I had considerable anti-white grievance, but Steve and Amy in their life choices laid bare the dangers of my single story, even more so when Amy died so tragically in my hometown. As race relations seem to be unraveling on both sides of the Atlantic, this impressive work of scholarship about the entangled histories of South Africa and the United States comes at an opportune time." "Readers interested in reconciliation processes and justice movements will find this study illuminating and moving." (Publishers Weekly) "Amy Biehl's Last Home will, for all its accessibility to a general readership, be of value to scholars of the South African transition, of the impact of South African events on the United States, and of what Gish calls 'forgiveness studies.'" "Gish brings new insights to the story of Amy Biehl, her death, and the family's coming to peace with the tragedy … His knowledge as an historian of modern South Africa gives nuance and depth to this inspiring story of commitment, sacrifice, and forgiveness." "Steven Gish has written a remarkable account of Amy Biehl's life, death, and what happened subsequently as her killers were brought to trial and her parents established a foundation in her name devoted to reconciliation and forgiveness. Deftly probing the controversies that erupted in South Africa after her death and the work of the foundation, Gish sensitively plumbs the pathos that is at the heart of the story. There were passages where I was brought to tears."