I’ve tried now three times to start this post, but it’s been really difficult. When I finished the book In the Shadow of the Banyan, I wanted to sit down and write a blog to do it justice, but I sat down to find that the words I wanted to use to describe it are nonexistent. They just aren’t there. There is no possible way for me to cover a story that is so monumental in just one blog post.

I’m going to try, but I won’t be surprised if what I produce here doesn’t even begin to describe my feelings when reading this book, or anyone else’s for that matter. If you’ve read it, you know exactly what I’m talking about. The book is possibly the most breathtaking, heartbreaking, tragic, and beautiful thing you will ever read, and it’s all of that at once.

The main character is a seven-year-old polio survivor during the communist revolution in Cambodia. She’s ten or eleven by the end of the book, though it’s hard to keep track, because it was hard for her to keep track. There were so many major events, so much moving, so much loss, and so much hunger and starvation that time almost doesn’t exist in this story. The book reads very much like a child’s journey, and it comes so authentically from someone in the main character’s position, as her aunt puts it, “you’re aware of so much, and yet you understand so little.” It’s also very poetic in a childish way, the way she tries so hard to make sense of her new, terrifying world through abstract stories.

It’s also got a bit of a father/daughter element to it, which anyone who knows me knows I can’t get enough of.

So if you’ve got time to read, you should really be reading this book. It has quickly jumped to my list of top ten favorites among my personal collection, and it’s worth every single tear you will shed.

And believe me, you will shed a LOT.