This is a breathtaking, heartwrenching, beautifully sad book about the Cambodian Civil War and its aftermath. Raami is used to life of privilege and doesn't understand why she and her family must suddenly move away from their home, or why her father, a kind poet, becomes a target of the Revolutionary army. Raami's situation continues to get worse, and worse, and though there are moments of kindness and love that buoy her up, the bitter facts of life under the inhuman rule of the Organization are always there, in her hunger, in her loss, and in her sadness. Told through the eyes of a child, the nonsense and inhumanity of violence is stark, and yet the world of spirit and story are almost never too far from narrator Raami's perspective--except for moments of pure bleakness, returning when, once again, there is hope. 
 I do not typically read historical fiction; this was a book I picked up through the app BookShout (which I use from my phone, explaining the length of time it took me to read). It is novels like this that make me wonder why I don't read *more* historical fiction. Ratner gives an overwhelmingly real look into Raami's life, transporting the reader to a time of fear and violence, and I cried along with Raami and her mother, even when they had no tears to cry. I wept even more when I read in the afterword that the novel is based on Ratner's real-life experiences as a child. 
 A beautifully sorrowful novel of the near-death of a people, and the hope of parents for the future of their child.