01/02/2023
In Badgley’s well-researched, dual-timeline novel, the themes of loss and ghosts of the past intertwine in a story about the lingering aftermath of a repressive regime in Cambodia. It’s 1993, and Emily Mclean is an American attorney on the fast track to success until a tragic accident claims her family and her leg. To escape her grief, she accepts a position in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, working with a foundation helping victims of the land mines set by the repressive Khmer Rouge of the 1970s. Emily’s story of adjusting to her new country while learning Cambodia’s violent history interlaces with 1977 journal entries of a Communist revolutionary from Yugoslavia who fell victim to the brutal regime. A mysterious painting reveals a tie between the two women, linking their timelines and pointing a way forward for Emily to heal.
The standout character in this novel is the setting of Phnom Penh, evoked with vivid detail. Fourteen years after the Khmer Rouge’s end, the city remains war-torn, and gruesome relics of the past, like the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide, pop off the page. The city’s inhabitants “all smiled,” Emily thinks, “but there was pain behind their eyes.”
The story moves at a clip, and the history lessons never feel heavy-handed. Emily progresses from a clueless, do-gooder American to an expat who embraces Cambodian culture. As an amputee, she discovers “her disability wasn’t a liability here, and it didn’t define her” as it had in the States. Her efforts to help, however, are stymied by her boss, Sonny, a Cambodian whose family fled but who returned as an adult to serve his homeland. Although he is a point of view character, Sonny is less fleshed-out, bouncing from gratitude for Emily’s help to sudden viciousness. Still, the novel is immersive, committed to capturing the texture of life amid striking historical detail.
Takeaway: A striking novel of an American supporting Cambodians in Phnom Penh in 1993.
Great for fans of: Rosemary Rawlins’s All My Silent Years and Vaddey Ratner’s In the Shadow of the Banyan.
Production grades Cover: B Design and typography: A Illustrations: N/A Editing: A Marketing copy: A