Love and Loss in Cambodia: a memoir

By Debra Groves Harman

"Love and Loss in Cambodia" is a story of adventures and travel. It's also about finding friends, not only the Cambodian people who become family, but others from all over the world. Ultimately, it's a story about facing the truth, about loss-and about resilience. This book will resonate with those who love Cambodia and Southeast Asia, or readers who want to know what it was like to live as a Westerner in the 1990s after the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia departed. Interested in what happens when Western-imposed governments go home? This is a first-hand account. While Cambodian politics play out, the author's personal life deteriorates.As a teenager, the author carried a heavy burden of grief and responsibility. First, her closest person died. Next, her father was critically injured in a traumatic car accident. Maybe that explains why she's willing to leave the US and go to parts unknown--ending up in Cambodia, or more likely, she's following a traveling man she married in 1993.Memories are drawn from the '90s when the author lived in Sihanoukville and Phnom Penh. That decade was considered dangerous, with Khmer Rouge active on Route 4. When she first arrived in 1994, three Westerners had recently been killed by KR bandits, and three more Westerners had been kidnapped and were being held on Phnom Vour. She and her teacher friends at ACE can't predict what will happen next. In 1997, political opponents take the battle to the streets of Phnom Penh. Though many people fled the violence of the fighting, she and her husband stayed. This is her story, one of courage, fortitude, and resilience.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0578537788
• ISBN13: 9780578537788
• Release Date: July 2019
• Publisher: Canby Media
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 0.71 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"