Diamonds In My Pocket: Tales from a Childhood in Asia

Only child of a beautiful blond English expatriate and the brilliant scion of an upper class Thai family, Amanda Kovattana came of age in the long-vanished world of aristocratic Bangkok. In this exquisitely-rendered memoir, Kovattana produces a chiaroscuro canvas full of sights and sounds and smells, of daily lives textured by honor and tradition, of a family ruptured by deceit and jealousy. Caught in a web of tensions between her mother and father, between East and West, the Old World and the New, the author finally uncovers the long-buried secrets of her own soul.