"Never Fall Down" by Patricia Mccormick

Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick that tells the story of Arn, a young Cambodian boy who finds himself caught between two warring factions, changing his life forever. Arn is only eleven when the Khmer Rouge first came through his village of Battambang in 1975. He and his family are forced to leave their home and, like the rest of his village, are soon rounded up into large groups by the Khmer Rouge.

First they are cataloged, during which process all those likely to revolt; those unable to work; those who are ill or disabled and those who are educated are weeded from the rest. They are taken and slaughtered, left in piles barely covered over, if at all. Those who remain after this cull are expected to work in rice fields for the good of all, given little if anything to eat, and constantly filled with the terror that they will be the next ones singled out to be beaten or worse. They are starved and still expected to work. The children are taken from the parents, boys going to one encampment, and girls to another. Arn has no idea if any of his family survives.

When the Vietnamese come to help Cambodia rid the country of the Khmer Rouge, Arn has been with them for so long that it is easy to convince him that the Vietnamese are the threat. He and the remaining children who don’t run into the woods in the confusion are given guns and sent out to discover the locations of their ‘enemies’. Arn manages to survive all of this, and eventually manages to get to the Thailand border where he is found and taken to a hospital. Sick and malnourished, he spends weeks there, befriending a man who visits often – Peter Pond. Peter takes a special interest in Arn and eventually brings him and two other children to New York where he adopts them and gives them a new life.

The transition is far from easy, and Arn struggles with the things he has seen and was forced to do in Cambodia. Peter gives him purpose – a reason to live. He teaches Arn that he was chosen to survive, and to tell the story of Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge to the rest of the world. In that way, perhaps he will save many. Now, the struggle to survive becomes the will to live.