Lost Children — Christopher Hart

Four English medical students in Central America - young, idealistic, and longing to help out.

This is no easy destination, with its crime and corruption, street gangs, drug lords and endemic violence. And when full-scale civil war threatens to erupt, the young idealists wisely head home - all except the enigmatic Nicholas, who has already fallen in love with his adoptive family, with their peaceful village life in the highlands, with this whole, chaotic, spellbinding country of flowers and fiestas, cloud forests and butterflies, earthquakes and volcanoes.

But tragedy will come even to this tranquil valley, and when his family is rent apart, he embarks upon a terrifying journey to find a little girl lost, and a dark odyssey into the teeming, infernal city.

A thrilling, haunting and deeply moving tour-de-force, Lost Children is an unforgettable story of privilege and poverty, First World and Third, ideals and realities - and the longing of the lost child for a family ...