Bones That Float, A Story of Adopting Cambodia

Wild Heaven Press, 2007-04-17. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. 8x5x1. Signed. No Stock Photos! We photograph every item. 246 pages; corners lightly bumped, some light edge wear, bit of wrinkling to top edge of jacket; Signed by the author on the title page; promotional material laid in. On March 24, 2001, American writer Kari Grady Grossman entered a crowded orphanage outside Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and met her 8-month-old son. One of the first questions Kari asked was "How did he get here?" The complex and at times heart-wrenching answer is told in this magnificent book encompasses Kari's personal journey to adoption, Cambodia's gruesome history of war and genocide, and the stories of two Cambodians -- one who escaped the Khmer Rouge s bloody reign and one who did not. The interweaving stories grab your heartstrings and do not let go. From the moment Kari realizes that she will never be an "earth momma" practicing prenatal yoga to years later as Kari wends her way on the back of a moto-taxi through Phnom Penh's smog-chocked streets trying to make a difference in her son's birth nation, you can t read impassively. Bones That Float takes you into the Khmer Rouge jungle where boy soldiers force starving families to labor all day at gunpoint, and it brings you to modern-day Phnom Penh streets where foreign pedophiles purchase the innocence of preteen Cambodian girls. But ultimately Bones That Float -- a Cambodian phrase for the sacred that rises above the suffering -- is a tale of hope. Kari reminds us that our world is "one big family" and that we cannot -- or dare not -- turn our backs on people who suffer in part because of our country s own foreign policy missteps. To read Bones That Float is to open your heart to caring.