In To Save Heaven and Earth, Jennie Burnet considers people who risked their lives in the 1994 Rwanda genocide of Tutsi to try and save those targeted for killing. Many genocide perpetrators were not motivated by political ideology, ethnic hatred, or prejudice. By shifting focus away from these classic typologies of genocide studies and focusing instead on hundreds of thousands of discrete acts that unfold over time, Burnet highlights the ways that complex decisions and behaviors emerge in the social, political, and economic processes that constitute a genocide.

To Save Heaven and Earth explores external factors, like geography, local power dynamics, and genocide timelines, as well as the internal states of mind and motivations of those who effected rescues. Framed within the interdisciplinary scholarship of genocide studies and rooted in cultural anthropology methodologies, Burnet presents stories of heroism and of the good done amidst the evil of a genocide that nearly annihilated Rwandan Tutsi and decimated Hutu and Twa who were opposed to the slaughter.