A mother and daughter reconsider their fraught relationship in Cambodian-American author Som Phin’s time-travel novel.
In 2025, 43-year-old Sophea Khun is a successful Cambodian-American immigration attorney based in California. She hasn’t spoken to her mother, Tevy Khun, in three years, as visits with Tevy prompt criticism about Sophea’s life choices, especially her lack of a husband and children.
When Sophea’s sister, Dara, invites Sophea to Tevy’s 74th birthday party at their family donut shop, Angkor Donuts, Sophea’s first instinct is to decline, but after serious contemplation, she agrees to attend. Tensions snap when Sophea and Tevy have a heated exchange in front of the guests, ending with Tevy slapping Sophea across the face. Deeply ashamed, Sophea races home during a heavy rainstorm; her car hydroplanes and crashes into the freeway barrier. When Sophea awakens, she has not only been transported to the fall of 1991, but she’s also inhabiting the body of her then 40-year-old mother.
Stuck without definitive answers, Sophea must live as Tevy—a refugee with limited English-speaking skills and an impoverished mother to five children. As she struggles to adjust to her new reality, Sophea learns how much Tevy endured to keep their family together.
The immigrant experience, particularly Tevy’s harrowing history as a refugee who escaped the Khmer Rouge regime, is written with sensitivity and insight. Sophea and Tevy’s relationship realistically depicts how the eldest daughter in immigrant families often has to assume adult responsibilities. While Phin movingly captures vulnerability, the mechanics of time travel—how changes in the past impact the present, where Tevy’s consciousness went while Sophea occupied her body, and what triggered Sophea to unlock a way home—could have been explained better. Additionally, secondary characters, namely the circle of Cambodian women who start the donut shop with Tevy, are drawn with surface-level details.
Nevertheless, this novel offers an emotionally piercing exploration of cultural identity, familial inheritance, unresolved trauma, and the importance of community that will resonate with readers.
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