As a part of the University’s project, One Book, One Campus, which encourages reading on campus, each student in the class of 2012 was given a copy of Tracy Kidder’s Pulitzer Prize winning book, “Mountains Beyond Mountains.” Kidder will be speaking Tuesday night at 7:30 p.m. at the Illini Union, but the Daily Illini had a chance to talk to him early.

Daily Illini: First can you tell me about your book, “Mountains Beyond Mountains?” I understand there is an interesting story behind you being inspired.

Tracy Kidder: Essentially, the story of a doctor named Paul Farmer who went to Haiti after college and got very moved by the plight of the indigents. He ended up being a doctor, and he ended up starting an organization to try to bring modern medicine to a squatter settlement in Haiti. It’s really the story of his quest and the organization he built. He’s a fascinating character really, very funny and interesting. To me that’s probably one of the best stories I ever happened to cross as a writer.

DI: How did you meet Farmer?

TK: I was an aid in 1994 when the United States sent about 20,000 troops to Haiti to restore the constitutionally elected government. I was pretty interested in the American soldiers, and that is what I had gone to write about. I just happened to be not too far from the hospital where Farmer and his organization were building at that time. He came by to see the special-forces captain, basically to warn him that he was losing his confidence in the people of the region. By accident I ran into Farmer on the plane on my way home for Christmas on the plane to Miami, and had a long talk with him on the plane. I saw him again once more in Boston. I became increasingly interested in him. Here was this guy who could lead a presumably comfortable life and yet he was spending as much of his life as he could at one the world’s most impoverished countries. It just seemed like an interesting story.

DI: Where did you come up with the title “Mountains Beyond Mountains?”

TK: It comes from a Haitian proverb, probably one of the most famous of them. It’s variously translated, but I think the best of them is “beyond mountains there are mountains.” And the Haitians use it in a lot of different ways, but mainly in two ways. One is to say there is no end to obstacles, and the other is to say there is no end to opportunities. It seemed to me to say something about the scale of difficulty that Farmer and his colleagues were doing.

DI: Why do you think your book was a good choice to be given to each incoming freshmen?

TK: I think that maybe young people today are pretty hungry for something that smacks meaning, something that offers a little more than this incredibly, incredibly, Americticious culture of ours.

I think this idea of service appeals to a lot of young people.

DI: If there’s one message or one key idea that you hope readers would take away from “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” what would that be?

TK: I guess it’s something like hope or possibility. Every American has a great deal more power than she or he thinks.

There is an enormous amount that one can do, and I think this whole story of one rather remarkable human being proves that.