A haunting and beautiful memoir from a Cambodian refugee who lost her country and her family during Pol Pot's genocide in the 1970s but who finds hope by reclaiming the recipes she tasted in her mother's kitchen.

RECIPE: HOW TO CHANGE CLOTH INTO DIAMOND

Take a well-fed nine-year-old with a big family and a fancy education. Fold in 2 revolutions, 2 civil wars, and 1 wholesale extermination. Subtract a reliable source of food, life savings, and family members, until all are gone. Shave down childhood dreams for approximately two decades, until only subsistence remains.

In Slow Noodles, Chantha Nguon recounts her life as a Cambodian refugee who loses everything and everyone—her home, her family, her country—all but the remembered tastes and aromas of her mother’s kitchen. She summons the quiet rhythms of 1960s Battambang, her provincial hometown, before the dictator Pol Pot tore her country apart and killed more than a million Cambodians, many of them ethnic Vietnamese like Nguon and her family. Then, as an immigrant in Saigon, Nguon loses her mother, brothers, and sister and eventually flees to a refugee camp in Thailand. For two decades in exile, she survives by cooking in a brothel, serving drinks in a nightclub, making and selling street food, becoming a suture nurse, and weaving silk.

Nguon’s irrepressible spirit and determination come through in this lyrical memoir that includes more than twenty family recipes such as sour chicken-lime soup, green papaya pickles, and pâté de foie, as well as Khmer curries, stir-fries, and handmade bánh canh noodles. Through it all, re-creating the dishes from her childhood becomes an act of resistance, of reclaiming her place in the world, of upholding the values the Khmer Rouge sought to destroy, and of honoring the memory of her beloved mother, whose “slow noodles” approach to healing and cooking prioritized time and care over expediency.

Slow Noodles is an inspiring testament to the power of food to keep alive a refugee’s connection to her past and spark hope for a beautiful life.

"I'd been up 35 hours, flown across the world, and watched my sister die ... it was time for a hot American shower, a bed, and a new day." In this true story, Kim Green takes readerson her journey through two simultaneous stories that inspire great faith. In 2015, she walked intimately through her sister's last months of fighting cervical cancer and two international adoptions. Finding Home is a tale of standing on faith and the Word of God, but ultimately trusting that He is sovereign and doing far more than any personcan ask or imagine. Finding Home is like reading two stories in one and its message of love is gently dove tailed throughout each chapter. Sometimes the way home takes onethrough unmapped neighborhoods and great surrender to see His will be done. Within Finding Home, follow Kim to the bedside of her dying sister and across the ocean to a Tanzanian orphanage. Learn what an unbroken promise and unwavering faith looks like in unlikely places. Ultimately, readers learn that they've found their way home when the Prince of Peace answers the door and settles in their heart that it is well, despite empty places at the table.