Showing results by narrator "Quyen Ngo" in All Categories

A stunning debut, showcasing the love between grandparents and grandchildren, the challenges of memory loss, and the joy that sweet reminders of a faraway home can bring, from award-winning, bestselling author Thanhhà Lại.

1986: The teenage daughter of a wealthy Vietnamese family gets lost in an abandoned rubber plantation while fleeing her angry father and is forever changed by the experience. 2011: Twenty-five years later, a young, unhappy Vietnamese American disappears from her new home in Saigon without a trace. The fates of both women are inescapably linked, bound together by past generations, by ghosts and ancestors, by the history of possessed bodies and possessed lands.

No doubt you can be close to someone who's very different from you. Ginger is excitable; she leaps into action, throwing herself headfirst into any project. Chrysanthemum is cooler-headed; she likes to plan, she's organized. She makes lists. Yet they are cousins, close as two beans in a pod. But planning Grandma's birthday together is a pretty huge challenge. There are presents to buy, decorations to pick, and a special birthday cake to bake. Together. How they manage it is a testament to affection being stronger than differences.

On April 24, 1975, the last flight out of Saigon, Vietnam carried over 400 people to the United States, six days before Saigon’s surrender to the North Vietnamese Army. Kristen Giang was a little girl, on that flight with family, and here in this story she shares all the emotions of the decision to flee from the perspective of someone eight years old; Playing a game of space-explorers to protect herself and her sister’s eyes from tear gas; sneaking a stuffed animal into the family’s overstuffed suitcase for comfort.