Home Is East

Ever since she was a tiny child, Amy’s father’s friends have told her that her young, pretty mother is going to leave her. Of course Amy knows that could never happen—her parents love each other and her, so how could her mother ever leave? Then, one chilly afternoon, Amy’s mother never shows up to pick her up from school. In that moment, Amy confronts a world that she never wanted to know existed.

Amy and her father are Khmer, or Cambodian. In Florida’s tight-knit Cambodian community, word ...