A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

As Chapter One closes, thirteen-year-old Ishikawa is boarding a train with his family; it is impossible not to be reminded of other mid-twentieth-century trains, European ones, the difference being that everyone in the latter cases had a fair idea of what lay ahead.

This book is tragedy beyond anything you or I have ever experienced or can imagine, compounded by the knowledge that it is happening in the present day. Ishikawa's narrow personal focus gives the reader perspective that no amount of newspaper coverage could; we are slammed on every page with nonstop daily suffering. And even though there's nothing we can do to help - not the author, not his family, not North Koreans - we can learn much from this book: about compassion, gratitude, and perhaps even about how to be skeptical of empty promises by narcissistic tyrants; how to avoid taking our own children onto those trains.