The book is based on the author's journal during an effort to assist Ashraf Sahil—a minor asylum seeker in Finland—and to help him avoid deportation to inhuman conditions.

[1] Sahil, who as a young child had fled with his family from Afghanistan to Pakistan in the 1990, was first sent to Iran from where he was carried to Greece through Turkey by human smugglers.

The Finnish Immigration officials did not grant him a due asylum process but instead imposed a deportation when the author received an e-mail request for help from his sociologist friend in Minneapolis.

In one level it describes in a form of a journal the actual incidents in chronological order, a 5-month period from March to August 2009.

Suoranta's ethics in helping and hiding a stranger is as follows: "Suffering and death because of the lack of basic needs or protection are unnecessary.