Author Event: Angel of the Garbage Dump with Jacob Wheeler

Local author Jacob Wheeler will talk about his newest book in person or join us via Zoom by registering HERE.

Maine-native Hanley Denning, the Angel of the Garbage Dump, saw poverty and desperation in its ugliest form, and refused to turn a blind eye. In the Guatemala City garbage dump she launched an educational reinforcement nonprofit called Safe Passage, or “Camino Seguro,” and helped pull thousands of children out of the teeming filth of one of the largest urban landfills in the Americas. 

Many idealistic Americans and Europeans travel to places like Guatemala to learn the local language, engage in humanitarian work, and seek adventure. Most of us return to our comfortable lives. But Denning, a collegiate track star and trained social worker with degrees from Bowdoin and Wheelock College, saw garbage pickers competing with vultures for the food dumped by trucks. She saw toddlers playing amidst rats. The experience changed her. It prompted her to, as Mother Teresa said, “find her own Calcutta.” Hanley called her family in New England and asked them to sell everything she owned and wire the money to Guatemala City. 

Hanley was killed in a car accident outside the Guatemalan capital in 2007, but Safe Passage continues to change countless lives today.

Author Jacob Wheeler fell in love with the Central American nation while studying Spanish in Quetzaltenango in the Guatemalan highlands. His first book, Between Light and Shadow (University of Nebraska Press, 2011), covered Guatemala’s child adoption industry. Wheeler lives in Traverse City, Michigan, with his wife Sarah and children, Nina and Leo. He publishes the Glen Arbor Sun newspaper and works with student journalists at Northwestern Michigan College.