A Blessing over Ashes: The Remarkable Odyssey of My Unlikely Brother

#416
Title: A Blessing over Ashes: The Remarkable Odyssey of My Unlikely Brother
Author: Adam Fifield
Publisher: Perennial
Year: 2000
334 pages

Adam Fifield's family wound up fostering Soeuth, a Cambodian refugee whose first foster family was not a good fit. This memoir recounts Adam's experiences of and with Soeuth and Adam's biological brother, interspersed with stories from Soeuth's experiences during the Khmer Rouge period and in adulthood. I particularly enjoyed Fifield's account of accompanying Soeuth to Cambodia, which took place after the country was back under more normal Cambodian governance, but while the Khmer Rouge were still active in the Northern and more remote areas of the country. This was a quick memoir to read, and because Fifeld is telling the American family's version of the foster family experience, an interesting companion to books by Cambodian foster children, such as Loung Ung's First They Killed My Father and Lucky Child.

Editors and proofreaders: Do you really not know that "numb chuck" is, at best, a slang rendition of "nunchuck"?* Do you not see several words incorrectly used by Fifield? Cleaning this stuff up is your job!

*Yes, pedant friends, I know that nunchuck is an Anglicized version of nunchaku.