Cambodia Fire: THE TRUE STORY OF ONE'S MAN'S SOLO MISSION TO HELP PUT OUT THE FIRES IN CAMBODIA FROM HIS HOME HALF-WAY AROUND THE WORLD.

On the morning of April 8, 2006, a pale green, twenty-eight-foot-long, 1976 FireMaster fire truck—Engine 633—drove away from a port in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, after traveling some 8,500 miles from Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. It had just cleared customs and was en route to a small fire station six kilometers away.

Just two years before that, Captain Sok, Sihanoukville’s fire chief, told author Douglas Mendel that his town was in need of a new fire truck. Mendel made it happen. In Cambodia F...