Home Is East

By age 9, when Amy Lim begins her story, she is well-versed in various forms of cruelty. Her father escaped Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge murdered his family. He's settled in St. Petersburg, Fla., where Amy has repeatedly heard her father's ""friends"" taunt him about the inevitability of his much-younger wife leaving him. Amy's mother, she is told repeatedly, ""only married Dad for a free ticket to the States."" And when her mother does leave, she deliberately strands her daughter at school on a day so cold that her classmates are hoping for snow. Devastated and embarrassed by his wife's betrayal, Amy's father first goes to seed, then plans a fresh start in Southern California (but doesn't tell Amy that's where her mother is living). Like real life, Amy and her father's adjustment is of the two-steps-forward, one-step-backward variety, which can make for an overlong and at times tedious story. Cultural nuances make Amy's family break-up distinct in a crowded field of similar stories, but it's hard to warm up to these characters. Amy's father's abuse of her renders his occasional tenderness hollow. And though readers will certainly empathize with Amy's plight, it manifests itself in frequent self-pitying passages, which can be difficult to read. Ages 8-12.