A REFUGEE'S AMERICAN DREAM

A Cambodian refugee to America reflects on his arduous journey to freedom and job as a Secret Service officer.

In this harrowing yet inspiring and upbeat survival story, Oun (b. 1966), writing with Starnes, chronicles his upbringing in a poor, close-knit community in Battambang City, in northwest Cambodia. The author’s father was a lieutenant in the army, and his mother worked as a seamstress and cigarette roller. In April 1975, the Khmer Rouge seized control of the country, and Oun’s father was taken away and vanished. Soon, destitute families were herded out of their homes and marched into the “Killing Fields,” where they endured awful conditions working in the rice paddies with little food or shelter. Oun writes poignantly about how he had his beloved dog with him until the soldiers shot him “because they could”—an episode that was indicative of the senseless violence perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge, which the author captures vividly. Suspected by others because of his soldier father, Oun had to change his name and survive by his wits, working as a mechanic, scavenging for bugs and catching rats at night for food. He was separated from his mother and captured and tortured. The refugee camps in Thailand held their own appalling conditions and dangers, but after three years, the author found resettlement in Maryland near some relatives. His relentless tenacity, loyalty, and hard work helped him graduate from high school and college, after which he served as a correctional officer before moving on to become a Secret Service officer and K-9 specialist. “If I can survive the Killing Fields of Cambodia to become a protector of the president of the United States,” he writes, “nothing in this world is impossible. I am living proof of that.”

A truly heartening story of sheer determination and the will to survive and thrive.