Historical Background

The book opens in the years 1975, not long after the Vietnam war and secret bombings from America during Nixon's presidency has come to an end. The Communist Khmer Rouge, troops supported by the Cambodian city of Phnon Penh, takes over Cambodia. Civilians are  forced to leave their homes and evacuate immediately due to the fact that the Khmer Rouge's belief that cities were capitalist inventions and should not be part of a Communist government. This belief led to a split between the communist North and the  democratic South.  Violence and war ensued on both sides as the Communist North supported by the Soviet Union and the Democratic South supported by the United States tried to gain control of the nation. The war was resulted in extreme bloodshed and by the time the Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot fell just four years later (in 1979), 2,000,000 deaths had been recorded. Millions of refugees who had been uprooted from their homes, forced to flee with only the clothes on their backs, and separated from their families.  Many were sent to camps where tens of thousands died of disease, poor sanitation, and malnutrition. The lucky few escaped the camps and were resettled by the United States and other members of the United Nations in foreign countries.  Even though the actual Khmer Rouge attacks ended in 1979, the devastating effects of this conflict were still visibly apparent with many families and friends missing or dead. Countless refugees have not been reunited to this day. Over the years there was a great number of southeast refugees were resettled in the United States where immigration laws, such as the Refugee Act of 1980, made unrestricted immigration for victims of the Vietnam War and Cuban refugee crisis a simple process. This novel serves as a reminder that resettlement in United States did not mean limitless opportunities. As in the case with  Sundara and her family, many were forced to work in menial jobs and few were ever able to reach white-collar positions in the workforce. This novel turns an unrelatable and often skimmed over topic in history, an  interesting story of love, hardships, and confusion that countless teenagers would find interesting.