This is a fascinating collection of vignettes drawn from the author’s family, youth, career, and travel. Paul Bennett provides readers with his unique perspective on his grandfather’s tragic death in WWI, Canada’s 1970 October Crisis, and the joys of an adolescent summer picking mushrooms in the French Pyrenées. The author recalls interviewing Cambodian refugees after the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime, and blissfully drinking coffee by the shores of Ethiopia’s placid Lake Langano. Learn how close he came to personal disaster during the catastrophic 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami and of a surreal trip to the bizarre Hermit Kingdom of North Korea.

This book will appeal to anyone with an appreciation of the diversity of life’s experiences and those willing to take a chance.

Born in Stratford, Ontario, the author has lived in various Canadian and foreign locales and travelled extensively. He has worked in an asbestos mine, served as a Canadian diplomat and been a movie extra.

Paul Bennett has also acted as a United Nations International Polling Station Officer in Cambodia and Ukraine and as a volunteer advisor to not-for-profits and business organizations in Africa. Residing in Ottawa, he contributes occasionally to various daily newspapers and heritage architecture publications.

Illustrator Anouk’chet Suong recently published Anouk’chet: Une fillette au pays des Khmers rouges, a childhood account of her experiences under the brutal Cambodian Khmer Rouge régime.