In a Rocket Made of Ice

Among the Children of Wat Opot

By: Gail Gutradt

Narrated by: Lorna Raver

A beautifully told, inspiring true story of one woman’s volunteer experiences at an orphanage in rural Cambodia—a book that embodies the belief that love, compassion, and generosity of spirit can overcome even the most fearsome of obstacles.

Gail Gutradt was at a crossroads in her life when she learned of the Wat Opot Children’s Community. Begun with just fifty dollars in the pocket of Wayne Dale Matthysse, a former Marine Corps medic in Vietnam, Wat Opot, a temple complex nestled among Cambodia’s verdant rice paddies, was once a haunted scrubland that became a place of healing and respite where children with or orphaned by HIV/AIDS could live outside of fear or judgment, and find a new family—a place that Gutradt calls “a workshop for souls.”

Disarming, funny, deeply moving, In a Rocket Made of Ice gathers the stories of children saved and changed by this very special place, and of one woman’s transformation in trying to help them. With wry perceptiveness and stunning humanity and humor, this courageous, surprising, and evocative memoir etches the people of Wat Opot forever on your heart.

Secretly a how-to book on living a fulfilling life

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

This is clearly not a self-help book that purports to impart wisdom about how to live a happy, meaningful life. Rather, on its face, it's the opposite. It appears to be a book about giving to the neediest and most innocent. But what it humbly accomplishes is exactly what the self-proclaimed guru guidebooks fail to: It shows us, through the stories of Wat Opot's children, how to live a fulfilling life. Listen.