UNKNOWN

What happens to a family when survival means silence?

In this powerful memoir, Peter Chhim shares the story of his family’s survival during the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia — one of the darkest chapters of the 20th century. Through intimate interviews with his parents and siblings, he reconstructs memories of forced labor, starvation, loss, and resilience, weaving them together with his own reflections as the child of survivors.

Each chapter gives voice to a different family member, revealing how war fractures not only lives but also memory, identity, and love. From quiet acts of defiance to unspoken grief, Beneath the Killing Fields preserves personal histories that might otherwise be lost to silence.

More than a memoir, this is a story of perseverance and hope — a reminder of the importance of remembering, even when remembering is painful. For readers of When Broken Glass Floats and First They Killed My Father, this book offers a deeply human perspective on survival, trauma, and the unbreakable bonds of family.

Peter Chhim is the son of Cambodian refugees who survived the Khmer Rouge genocide. Born in 1977 while the regime was still in power, he grew up in Canada surrounded by the silence of a past his family rarely spoke about — yet one that shaped his understanding of resilience, memory, and survival.
 
Now based in the United States, Peter works in quality and process improvement and holds a PhD in Industrial & Systems Engineering and an Executive MBA from Michigan State University.
 
Beneath the Killing Fields is his debut book, written to preserve the voices of his parents and siblings and to ensure that their stories — and the history they lived through — are not forgotten.