The rent collector book

Awards-Best Novel, Whitney Award Book of the Year, ForeWord Review Magazine.The Rent Collector powerfully illustrates how literacy can change lives and how anyone can "rise from the ashes" in the most unlikely of places. ( From the publisher.) Just when things seem worst, Sang Ly learns a secret about the ill-tempered woman they call "the rent collector" who comes demanding money-a secret that dates back to the Khmer Rouge and sets in motion a tide that will change the life of everyone it sweeps past. Life would be hard enough without the worry for their chronically ill child, Nisay, and the added expense of medicines that are not working. They make their living scavenging recyclables from the trash.

Survival for Ki Lim and Sang Ly is a daily battle at Stung Meanchey, the largest municipal waste dump in all of Cambodia.