Mercy’s Heroes: The Fight for Human Dignity in the Bangkok Slums
In Mercy’s Heroes, a Vietnam veteran battling with PTSD turns from the business world to life as a volunteer, helping to rescue and protect street kids in Bangkok’s biggest slum.
Here Tom Crowley details the children’s efforts to survive abuse and the struggle for dignity waged by the poorest of families. Interwoven throughout, the author’s combat experiences and pain highlight the question of how to find personal reconciliation amid the struggles of abused children in the slums. In his efforts to help others, he gains a spiritual understanding worth much more than his financial loss. At the same time, he learns, “You must consign the failures to the burden the angels can carry and let go of the guilt.”
This story will resonate with all those who want to gain a deeper insight into social work at the street level. The successes are to be celebrated-the losses mourned. Mercy’s Heroes portrays the healing that is to be found in helping others.
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Tom Crowley served in Vietnam as a rifle platoon leader with the 25th Infantry Division, was wounded in action, and received awards for heroism. He battled with PTSD during his thirty-year corporate career in Asia and subsequently volunteered and spent fourteen years working with the Mercy Centre, a street kid's charity in Bangkok, Thailand. He is a member of the Military Writer's Society of America (MWSA), the Mystery Writers of America (MWA), and the International Thriller Writers (ITW). His previous works include the non-fiction Bangkok Pool Blues and Shrapnel Wounds, and action/adventure fiction set in Thailand: Viper's Tail, Murder in the Slaughterhouse, which won a bronze award from MWSA, and Bangkok Gamble.