Shortlisted for the National Biography Award 2018

Writing for Raksmey tells of the lives of six families who fled the aftermath of the Cambodian killing fields, were held in a crowded refugee camp at the border of their country, and then sent back to a nation still at war. The past is not spoken about but the struggles are not over and the sons and daughters of those who once were refugees sense mystery in their legacy and know it is important to them.

Joan Healy lived and worked with these refugees for many years. In response to a young man who said he 'needed to know everything', she has told a story of his troubled homeland, retrieved from the fading pages of her journals and letters. The saga of this quarter century is witness to both a determination to survive and human goodness that was never quenched.

Joan Healy's personal, learned, eye-witness account is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand Cambodia.

'Anna Akhmatova wrote of the millions who perished in Stalin's purges, 'I'd like to name you all by name.' Joan Healy names by name Cambodian survivors of the Khmer Rouge. She was there. The people she introduces us to we won't forget. We have not had a book like this in Australia.'  Maria Tumarkin

Extracted in the Sydney Morning Herald