Horrifying history
This book is very important to educating the world about the horrors inflicted on the country of Cambodia in the 1970s. Of course, I was familiar with the Khmer Rouge and their oppression and genocide of the Cambodian people but reading a first-hand account of this period in history was eye-opening. Mr. Taing’s story is hard to read because it’s almost unbelievable that so many terrible things happened to him and his family. He gives a detailed account of each step of his journey over five years as a young man from fleeing Cambodia to Thailand and back and forth to and from labor and refugee camps and his treacherous trek across a mountainous minefield that had me on the edge of my seat. The years of starvation, slave labor, torture and danger on every journey that this family suffered is mind-boggling. This is an incredible survival story and an important one that needs to be told. Thanks to BookishFirst, NetGalley and Greenleaf Publishing for the Advanced Reader Copies of this book.