Rheumatic heart disease, typically the consequence of an untreated childhood infection, affects 18 million people in Africa and kills 300,000 of them every year. Open Heart tells the powerful story of eight Rwandan children who leave their families to journey to the Salam Centre for Cardiac Surgery, in Khartoum, Sudan, the African continent’s only free-of-charge, state-of-the art cardiac hospital. Cori Shepherd Stern, Neal Baer