You show nothing, maybe you live.” While never shying from the ugliness and brutality of this genocide, McCormick crafts a powerful tribute to the human spirit. On how to survive, Arn observes, “You show you care, you die. McCormick divides the narrative into five periods: life before the revolution in the camps, where Arn learns to play the music (which is used to disguise the noise of regular executions) his induction into the Khmer Rouge his time in a refugee camp and, finally, his transition to America. Doing so involves great moral compromises, bravery, and a capacity for love and friendship despite the nightmarish circumstances. Patricia McCormick Never Fall Down: A Novel Paperback Decemby Patricia McCormick (Author) 1,216 ratings Goodreads Choice Award nominee See all formats and editions Kindle 11.99 Read with Our Free App Audiobook 0.00 Free with your Audible trial Hardcover 13.30 55 Used from 1.18 18 New from 9.69 3 Collectible from 7. They’re walking into one of the most tragic moments of history: the Killing Fields. Eleven-year-old Arn is walking through the countryside in Cambodia. Arn's against-all-odds survival story and McCormick's crisp prose gripped me from the first page to the very end. Arn’s narration balances a palpable and constant sense of fear, starvation, and humiliation with his will to survive. A powerful novel about a young boy who survives the Killing Fields in Cambodia. In Never Fall Down, Patricia McCormick captures brilliantly the man, his heart, and his passion to make Cambodia and our world a better place for all.

Career McCormick graduated from Rosemont College in 19741978. She has twice been a finalist for the National Book Award.

Not unlike Linda Sue Park’s A Long Walk to Water, this novel is based on a real person, Arn Chorn Pond, who was 11 years old at the time of the country’s Communist revolution. Patricia McCormick (born May 23, 1956) is an American journalist and writer of realistic fiction for young adults. McCormick (Purple Heart) again tackles a horrifying subject with grace while unsentimentally portraying the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge and Cambodia’s killing fields.

Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick