On October 5, 2003, when Annalena Tonelli was shot and killed inside the hospital in Borama, Somaliland, that she established for people with tuberculosis (TB), Africa had been her home for 34 years. She had arrived in Kenya in 1969 from Italy, with a fresh law degree and against her family’s wishes. The 1950s and 1960s were considered the heyday of global TB research, and Kenya was the hub in Africa, but for nomads, antibiotics and combination therapies — which were curing TB patients in other parts of the world — were largely ineffective. Annalena would achieve a 93 percent cure rate among her patients and the World Health Organization would eventually adopt her unique approach to treating nomads with TB. Stronger than Death is the story of Annalena Tonelli, a woman inspired by the lives of Mahatma Gandhi and Charles de Foucauld. The approach to treating people with TB that she pioneered forever impacted Somali society. Journalists took to calling her the Mother Teresa of Somalia, but Somalis never called her that. Annalena wasn’t a saint to them or there to help them die. She was flesh and blood, a woman with whom they had a relationship. She was there to help them live.

Who's not afraid of tuberculosis, Al-Shabaab, and famine? Meet Annalena Tonelli, the Mother Teresa of Somalia: https://www.plough.com/annalena "A searing account of a person, place, deadly disease, unspeakable violence, and, ultimately, faith, love, and sacrifice." - Booklist "An absorbing and clear-eyed examination of the work of one of East Africa's greatest humanitarians."

Rachel Pieh Jones writes about life at the crossroads of faith and culture. Her work is influenced by living in the Horn of Africa, raising Third Culture Kids, and adventurous exploration of the natural world and has been published in the New York Times, Christianity Today, Runners World, Deadspin, the Christian Science Monitor, the Big Roundtable, and more. She is the author of four books: "Stronger than Death: How Annalena Tonelli Defied Terror and Tuberculosis in the Horn of Africa," "Finding Home: Third Culture Kids in the World," "Welcome to Djibouti: Arrive, Survive, and Thrive in the Hottest Country on Earth," and the award-winning cookbook "Djiboutilicious." Rachel and her husband founded The International School of Djibouti in Djibouti City, where she works as the Director of Student and Community Life. She is the second-place finisher of the inaugural Somaliland Marathon (don’t ask how many women participated) and a cancer survivor. Rachel is currently working on a memoir about how her faith has been impacted by the five pillars of Islam and her Somali community over seventeen years in the Horn of Africa (Plough, 2021).