Escape from the Killing Fields: One Girl Who Survived the Cambodian Holocaust [Paperback]

Nancy Moyer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1991

Escape from the Killing Fields tells the true story of Ly Lorn, a young Cambodian woman caught up in the genocide that took place in the 1970s. The lone Christian in her Buddhist family, Ly Lorn's love of God illuminated her walk through that horrible valley of death that was Cambodia.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Zondervan (July 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0310538912
• ISBN-13: 978-0310538912
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #528,860 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Deserves to Be Well Known, June 13, 2010

By 

K. Turek "keithdt" (Pittsburgh, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Escape from the Killing Fields: One Girl Who Survived the Cambodian Holocaust (Paperback)

This is an excellent account of the sufferings experienced by the author & her family during the Cambodian Holocaust. It is gripping & well done. It deserves to be widely read & better known. Although it has a Christian slant, it doesn't much affect the main part of the narrative. It would be a valuable and gripping read for anyone regardless of their religious beliefs. I rarely post book reviews but felt this book really deserved a review.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Terribly inaccurate. Skip this one., November 3, 2011

By 

Ry (Massachusetts, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Escape from the Killing Fields: One Girl Who Survived the Cambodian Holocaust (Paperback)

Ly Lorn may be a real Cambodian survivor of the Democratic Kampuchean revolution; I don't have any way to know, since I haven't met her.

Her ghostwriter, Nancy Moyer, on the other hand, is a propagandist with no ability to check facts. She is only concerned with pushing a Christian evangelist agenda on both the readership of this book, and Cambodians at large. There is a very large number of verses from the Bible in the book, and they interrupt the story. Further, it is extremely hard to believe that Ly Lorn, the supposed author, actually wrote it, given the slang, the inaccuracies, and the thoroughly Western analysis of the situation. Nancy Moyer and Ly Lorn both worked for World Vision, a worldwide Christian evangelism machine, and this book is propaganda in favor of World Vision, not a historical document concerning the Democratic Kampuchean revolution. The book is riddled with inaccuracies, reports of events and situations that contradict every reputable source on the subject. I have no opinion about whether the book presents what Ly Lorn remembers of the situation; I would not be surprised if a survivor's memory were very disturbed and able to create memories that were untrue.

The inaccuracy begins with the very cover itself - the cover is a caricature of Vietnamese people, not Cambodians; Cambodians never dressed in the manner depicted, certainly not during the Khmer Rouge period (in which everyone wore black pajama-style garb), and never wore those typically-Vietnamese hats. The illustrator clearly knows nothing about Cambodian culture or the KR revolution, or s/he would know that Cambodia and Vietnam are historically enemies and that Cambodians have never looked like Vietnamese caricatures.

It is especially sad that Ly Lorn converted from Buddhism to Christianity thanks to World Vision propagandists. Most of her family died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. Her new beliefs indicate that these family members now reside in Hell, since they were Buddhist instead of Christian. Theravada Buddhism has no hell, and if she were still Buddhist she would have the comforts of being able to speak with the spirits of her ancestors (forbidden as "idol worship" among Christian evangelists), and of knowing that they were not in Hell but rather reincarnated on Earth. What a shame.

If you are a Christian zealot, this book will reinforce your beliefs. If you are interested in learning about the KR or the DK revolution, ignore this one completely and read any of the dozens of memoirs and scholarly works by reputable authors.

I am so glad I picked up this book used and didn't inadvertently give money to World Vision by buying it new. Don't buy it. If you feel you must buy it, buy it used like I did, so you don't give them money to keep hurting people with. I'm glad I read it, since it's part of the body of literature on a topic I care about very deeply, but I must dismiss it as pure propaganda and will not be citing it in any of my research.