A thrilling, harrowing, profoundly moving novel, based on the real-life experience of Arn Charn, later Charn-Pond. Arn is a boy in a rural Cambodian village when the Khmer Rouge come to power. His village is destroyed and his family scattered as the brutal Pol Pot regime takes over. Arn watches his brother die by the side of the road - and must keep walking. He endures agonizing hardships, separations, and privations. Throughout, he must keep his emotions firmly in check; to reveal anything risks immediate execution by ruthless Khmer Rouge troops.

As his feelings harden, his life gets steadily worse. His musical skill spares his life, but at terrible cost. I shan't tell you much more, as each revelation seems even more devastating as the heart-breaking wrench before.

Author McCormick has taken Arn's story and boiled it down to searing. Written in the simplest phrases, evidently not native English, she conveys Arn's story with the bluntest unvarnished truth.

This is not the easiest book to read, by any margin. But it was hugely moving. Bruce and I recently met Arn at a NYC reception. I told him I was in the midst of his book, and how much it moved me. We ended up in a tearful embrace; I still well up thinking about his courage, and the extraordinary story of survival which is this book.