A Blessing Over Ashes by Adam Fifield: book review

A Blessing Over Ashes: The Remarkable Odyssey of My Unlikely Brother (2000) is a true story of an American family’s adoption of a 14-year-old Cambodia boy, Soeuth.

Adam, the narrator, is eleven years old, and his brother Dave is nine, when his foster brother arrives in America in 1983 after surviving the killing fields of Cambodia – separated from his family at the age of seven, and a starving child slave under Pol Pot’s brutal regime.

Adam tells of Soeuth’s life – his past and his assimilation into a new life in America. At the same time, Adam is learning to understand Cambodia’s history and the social ramifications of the politics of the 1970s.

The bonding of brothers takes time, as Adam narrates Soeuth’s transition from school to work to marriage.

In 1996, the brothers travel to Cambodia for a month to return to Soeuth’s homeland and home town to rediscover his heritage.

Adam ends the novel with both of them having their palms read by a fortune teller on their last day in Cambodia.

It’s an interesting read historically and socially, and an honest insight into two boys from different cultures navigating the road to adulthood and their own identities. In telling the story, Adam goes slightly below the surface, but not deep enough emotionally, as he maintains a certain sense of distance and analysis. Nevertheless, there are facts worth telling about the healing of deep psychological wounds.

MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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