{"product_id":"before-the-pendant-som-phin-9798250957809","title":"Before The Pendant: The Prequel to The Lotus Between Worlds","description":"\u003cb\u003eSome love stories begin with a glance. This one begins with a footnote.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003eCambodia, 1965. Neary Chen is fifteen, arguing with footnotes and wanting more than the market stall she was born into. Sovann Prum is eighteen, quiet in the way people mistake for slowness, and very deliberately leaving a history book on the corner stool of her family's noodle shop. He will tell himself it was an accident. He will know, by the time he reaches the end of the lane, that it wasn't.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat begins over a drought paper and a disputed footnote becomes, slowly and stubbornly, something neither of them planned for - river mornings, margin arguments, a life built together in a Battambang that smells of charcoal and lemongrass and thirty years of cooking. By turns funny, tender, and quietly devastating, \u003ci\u003eBefore the Pendant\u003c\/i\u003e is a novel about what people build when they are allowed to - and what it means to carry that with you when the world you built it in is gone. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eFor readers of The Lotus Between Worlds, this is the novel that answers the questions the pendant carries: who made it, who wore it, what it survived, and what it cost. For new readers, it is a complete story on its own - a slow-burn love story set against the full sweep of modern Cambodian history, told with warmth and dry humor and the specific weight of a life that was genuinely, fully lived.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Som Phin\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9798250957809\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Independently Published\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 03\/06\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 256\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.76lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.54d","brand":"Som Phin","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":50665519939839,"sku":"9798250957809","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/before-the-pendant-som-phin-9798250957809","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}