On June 8, 1972, 8-year-old Kim Phuc’s life was irrevocably changed when South Vietnamese forces dropped napalm bombs on their own people in an attempt to destroy the trade route of Viet Cong rebels. Kim and many others were sheltered nearby in a temple where they had sought sanctuary. In an iconic photograph that captured the world’s attention, Kim—burned and naked—is seen running for her life. That photograph would come to play a momentous role, both positive and negative, in Kim’s life.
Though her journey has been previously chronicled in a detailed political book, The Girl in the Picture by Denise Chong, Kim’s goal in writing Fire Road is to tell “the story beneath the story told there, a divine underpinning that for many decades even I could not detect, a set of spiritual stepping-stones that, unbeknownst to me, were paving a path to get me to God.”
Kim’s hope-filled memoir attests to the awesome, mysterious power of God to turn evil to good. She points out that “we are all walking one fire road or another, be it paved by relational upheaval or financial upheaval, physical or emotional or the general inconveniences of life.” She urges Christians to come alongside others with “a posture of peace . . . or with anything that looks and acts like Jesus” in order to help put out the fires we encounter in a hurting world. (Tyndale Momentum)
About the Author
Sonya VanderVeen Feddema is a freelance writer and a member of Covenant CRC in St. Catharines, Ontario.