The Rent Collector Published by Shadow Mountain on January 3, 2024 Source: Netgalley Arc
Genres: Fiction / Biographical, Fiction / Women
Pages: 288
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Format: Ebook Arc
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Words provide a voice to our deepest feelings. I tell you, words have started and stopped wars. Words have built and lost fortunes. Words have saved and taken lives. Words have won and lost great kingdoms. Even Buddha said that… Share on XSurvival for Ki Lim and Sang Ly is a daily battle at Stung Meanchey, the largest municipal waste dump in all of Cambodia. They make their living scavenging recyclables from the trash. Life would be hard enough without the worry for their chronically ill child, Nisay, and the added expense of medicines that are not really working. Just when things seem most bleak, Sang Ly learns a secret about the hated, ill-tempered woman, the "the rent collector"-she can read Reluctantly she agrees to teach Sang Ly and does so with the same harshness she applied to her collection duties until they both learn how literacy has the power to instill hope and transcend circumstance.
Based on a true story, set in the abject poverty of Cambodia against the backdrop of political oppression and the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge.
Why I Read This Book:
I joined a new to be me challenge called In Case You Missed It and it goal to read one of the best books out of each year from 2012-2023 from a list generated by the owners of the challenge. If you like more infomation you can get that at Book Girls Guide.
Also this book was one of my netgalley backlist books so it worked for both challenges.
Review:
The Rent Collector is one of those novels you pick up at just the right time, and it cleanses your soul to the core of who you are. As my first read for 2024, it did just that, as I read about a family who lives in the dump in Cambodia and a mother’s desperate attempt to learn to read to hopefully open up more doors for herself and her young son. Read if you are tired of hopelessness, read if you believe in redemption even in the hardest of hearts, and read if you love reading. This book will give you all the feels and make you even more grateful for the life you have, the life you will have, and the life you share with those you interact with.
About Cameron Wright
Camron Wright was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. He has a master’s degree in Writing and Public Relations from Westminster College. He has owned several successful retail stores in addition to working with his wife in the fashion industry, designing for the McCall Pattern Company in New York.
Camron says he began writing to get out of attending MBA school, and it proved the better decision. His first book, Letters for Emily, was a Readers Choice Award winner, as well as a selection of the Doubleday Book Club and the Literary Guild. Letters for Emily has been published in North America, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Korea, the Netherlands, and China.
The Rent Collector, his second book, won Best Novel of the Year from the Whitney Awards and was a nominee for the prestigious International DUBLIN Literary Award.
The Orphan Keeper won Book of the Year, Gold accolades in Multicultural Fiction from Foreword Reviews. Other books include The Other Side of the Bridge, Christmas by Accident, and his latest book, In Times of Rain and War will release in April 2021.
Camron lives with his wife, Alicyn, just south of Salt Lake City at the base of the Wasatch Mountains. He is the proud father of four children, all girls but three.
