"ASREI, Daughter of the Killing Fields, is a heart rending and gut wrenching account of the living hell into which Cambodia was transformed by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge during the years when they tried by brute force to transform this gentle land into a classless and communist utopia. It is one young woman's story of how she and her family tried to survive the mendacious and murderous policies of a regime which was pitiless in its efforts to extirpate all remnants of the "ancien regime" and to eliminate anyone who dared to maintain even a semblance of individuality. Orphaned by the Khmer Rouge, who killed both her parents while she was still a child, the fact that Theary Seng and so many members of her extended family survived the killing fields is a modern miracle.

But it is also an unforgettable tribute to the triumph of the human spirit, the life force which refuses to surrender to death, and the unquenchable yearning of a young girl to breathe free. In Theary Seng's odyssey from an orphaned waif whose life hung on minute balances over which she had no control, to the successful and accomplished graduate of an American Law School, lies one of the great tales of survival and success in the long history of man's inhumanity to man. Read it and weep for her people. But read it also to rejoice in her triumph."