As young men, Kurt Ver Beek, an American sociologist, and Carlos Hernández, a Honduran schoolteacher, devoted their lives to helping the poor. But it wasn't until they moved to an extraordinarily dangerous neighborhood in Honduras that they came to a radical conclusion: The charity world was combating poverty incorrectly.

In gripping prose, journalist Ross Halperin chronicles how these two best friends became quasi vigilantes and charged into a series of life-and-death battles: first with the gang that terrorized their community, then with a notorious tycoon who commanded about a thousand-armed men, and finally with a police force whose corruption and brutality defied credulity. Their efforts made some of the most violent neighborhoods on earth safer and arguably improved the functioning of a national government, but in the process of pulling that off, they compromised their principles, precipitated collateral damage, and acquired their share of outraged critics.

A remarkable and dangerous feat of reportage, Bear Witness is a thrilling account of an unorthodox mission to establish justice in a place thought to be beyond the reach of the law.