The book I read was “The Colony” by John Tayman. This book was filled full of horrors of the extremely terrifying disease called Leprosy also know as Hansen's disease. This book tells gruesome stories about the lives of those affected by the monstrous affliction. The stories told will be a permanent scar on the minds of the people who know those people's sadness. This is the true toll of human ignorance and we all must know of the ghastly tales of the thousands of lives that went through hell-like conditions in the means of survival. Though all has been done to those pitiful souls, forgiveness is still possible to me in the wake of new society.

The main point in this book is that the devastation caused by the misunderstanding of the disease is caused by the intolerance and impatience of the early peoples in other countries and our own country. The story of the first exiles is heartbreaking and the fact that their exodus was so poorly planned the castaways had to merely walk up a cliff to a new “home” which was just a grass hut with little supplies. One more horror of the mass exit of the scared people is that they all knew that they were going to die in the colony and with barely enough supplies to live off of it seemed to them that the government was actually trying to kill them. If this was me, I could not even stand to bear the thought and burdens of leaving my family and friends for a new life that would not be even one hundredth of the life I was used to have.

This book was overall a sad book and was deeply depressing but once I realized the determination of the ones trapped it made me feel better. I gave this book five stars because it means something to the people whose lives were lost in the generations of conflict between the infected and the ones who fought in fear of a epidemic.

My conclusion is that the heart-felt stories of those whose lives were drastically ripped and torn apart by the illness are and can be a universal message of how past mistakes can be forgiven through ways of understanding the mistakes and failures of generations before.

My final review is that this book deserves five stars from everyone for the valiant people who chose to rise against and fight for the right way to cure the disease. In conclusion the way of our ancestors must be heeded for the mistakes of the past may be forgotten.