A Blessing over Ashes : The Remarkable Odyssey of My Unlikely Brother [Hardcover]

Adam Fifield (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 20, 2000

From a writer of insight, wit, and compassion
comes the remarkable story of a boy from the
killing fields of Cambodia who irrevocably
changed the life of an American family.
A Blessing Over Ashes

In clear vivid prose, Adam Fifield recaptures the snowy night when he, at the age of eleven, along with his mother, father, and younger brother, waited to welcome fifteen-year-old Soeuth into the family. The boy shuffled in, short and scrawny, a baseball cap shading his downcast eyes. He spoke not a word, yet a silent terror hovered around him.

The author describes the events of the months that followed: Soeuth's wariness and detachment; his fear of being seized in the night by his parents' ghosts; Adam's discovery of his new brother's amazing physical skills, like catching fish with his bare hands; and Soeuth's eventual and painful emergence from years of darkness. As Soeuth gradually adjusts to rural middle-class America, a world fantastically foreign from the horrors of his homeland, a bond is formed with his new brothers that would permanently affect them all.

In his senior year of high school, Soeuth leaves home, lured by an anesthetic world of drugs and alcohol. Over the next few years, the brothers drift apart, distracted by college, jobs, girlfriends. Then Soeuth finds out that the members of his Cambodian family -- whom, for fourteen years, he has presumed to be dead-are alive. The discovery is the beginning of a new journey -- one that reunites Soeuth with his long-lost brothers, sisters, and parents...and with his American brother Adam.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A cross-cultural meeting between Middle America and Cambodia, A Blessing Over Ashes is an unusual story that combines classic coming-of-age events with the sad history of a young refugee from the devastated Cambodia of the last decades. Soeuth--the refugee--came to live with the Fifield family at the age of 14. Adam, the family's eldest son, narrates the story in conversational slang; reading this book is like listening to an old friend tell his surprising life story. Beginning chapters alternate between Adam and Soeuth's childhood, and the differences are striking, often disturbing: afternoon shopping trips contrasted with work camps, cultural events with exchange students compared with starvation and severe beatings. As they attend school together (Soeuth tutoring Adam in math) and fish (Soeuth successfully with his bare hands, Adam unsuccessfully with rod and reel), they become somewhat closer, but throughout the book there is a sense of distance from Soeuth, a feeling that he is not communicating deeply with anyone. Both boys move through their lives--Adam as a reporter, Soeuth as a mechanic--experiencing relationship troubles, cross-country moves, career frustrations, a marriage, and other fairly standard events. After years believing his Cambodian family dead, Soeuth discovers many relatives are still alive and struggling, and he is able to establish contact with them, which sadly seems to bring more responsibility and guilt than satisfaction. Ending the book on a humorous note, a conversation about a fortune teller and his prediction for Soeuth's life is a hopeful glimpse into what the future may bring now that his two worlds have been brought together. --Jill Lightner

From Publishers Weekly

Just after Christmas 1984, Soeuth Saut, a 14-year-old Cambodian refugee, arrived at the Fifield home in windswept Vermont. Much to the puzzlement of Adam Fifield, then 11, his newly adopted big brother was a taciturn boy who eluded his American family's affections and never discussed the country he came from. To dramatize the gaping differences in their backgrounds, Fifield uses short, alternating chapters depicting his carefree life in the lush Champlain Valley and the grim chronicle of Soeuth's coming-of-age under Pol Pot. While Fifield's descriptions are tediously detailed (when the Fifields take Soeuth to see the film The Killing Fields, for example, we learn where they sit in the theater, who sits next to whom and how the popcorn is shared), he provides little historical background for those unschooled in the complexities of Cambodian history. This peculiar approach makes for particularly baffling reading in the sections that report on Soeuth's return to Cambodia when, 14 years after his departure, he learns that his family is alive. Though Fifield was not present, his narration is peppered with phrases that are oddly omniscient: "Soeuth sat next to his mother on the bed, his hands still in his lap. His mother smiled quietly, her weary, wrinkled face, her soft dark eyes, telling him a thousand things." Yet a clear depiction of the political forces behind young Soeuth's life in labor camps and his long searches for his family in Cambodia before his adoption, as well as the tensions that persist and endanger him on his later returns, remain, much like Soeuth is to Fifield, frustratingly elusive. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1st edition (June 20, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0380976803
• ISBN-13: 978-0380976805
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,831,073 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An unflinching, wise book full of love and compassion, June 28, 2000

By 

"sharonmrock" - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Blessing over Ashes : The Remarkable Odyssey of My Unlikely Brother (Hardcover)

Adam Fifield's rich prose is a pleasure, and his sense of narrative is elegantly gripping. I gobbled the whole book up in one sitting and wished it could have been even longer. His humane, sympathetic vision is the key to a book that manages to indict and embrace the thorny aspects of cross-culturalization at once. The unfolding of parallel childhoods is even-handed; he lets no one off the hook. There are pockets of unexpected humor and desolate poignancy going off like little landmines throughout the pages. This is a wonderful book abut the power of family and the horrors of our recent past.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A memoir of rare integrity, July 19, 2000

By 

Charles M. Schroeder - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Blessing over Ashes : The Remarkable Odyssey of My Unlikely Brother (Hardcover)

Mr. Fifield's memoir was, quite simply, one of the best books I've ever read. Perhaps my effusive praise comes as a result of my reading experience, (I read the book during a vacation to Peru, the huts and villages of the Amazon Rain Forest reflecting the Cambodia Fifield so vividly paints)but his writing is so strong that any environment, even a darkened room, would be transformed by his subtle and gripping prose.

Never lacking the New England wit, Fifield displays an empathy towards humanity that is, unfortunately, all too rare. It's exhilarating to read the differences between Fifield's upbringing (a steady diet of video games and commercialism) and his brother Soueth (who slaved away for Pol Pot) When these two very powerful cultures come together, the reader is picked up and thrown round the room for pages on end. Where I landed was somewhere between exhultation and exhaustion.

Perhaps my favorite part of the book is Fifield's tone. He never takes a reverential perspective, and keeps the humor flowing even in the saddest parts. In a subject that could easily skid into sentimentalism, Fifield's delicate touch steers the prose back on course and the reader is pulled along too,enjoying every turn along the way.

The best critique that I can muster in this very small box Amazon has provided me is to say flat out that Mr. Fifield's book is a must for anyone with a family; traditional, or not; happy or sad; from here or from elsewhere.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An amazing book for so many different reasons., December 8, 2000

By 

Craig Nghiem, M.D (Mission Viejo, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Blessing over Ashes : The Remarkable Odyssey of My Unlikely Brother (Hardcover)

As a former refugee who came to the United States at age 8, I understand a few of the main character's experiences, i.e growing up "different" in America. Luckily there are many other experiences in his amazing life which are completely foreign to me, living through the killing fields of Cambodia, adoption into a loving American family, financially supporting his long lost Cambodian family, etc... This is an amazing book for so many different reasons. It gives the reader an honest and intimate look at a unique and rich life very different form their own. I gained insight on some of my contemporaries by reading this book. It is a testimony of one brother's love for another. Finally, this book illustrates a character of the American people that is sometimes forgotten. Americans, as a whole, are a generous people. I've recommended this book to so many friends, especially those with an interest in understanding people with experiences different from their own.