This is the heartbreaking story of Laos in the aftermath of the Vietnam war. Paul Yoon's writing is effervescent and flows beautifully. His ability to tie decades of history into personal narratives that bring us to the ground of Laos and feel for these characters is unprecendented. An obvious recommendation for any fan of historical fiction and an incredibly important read.

Sometimes books just don't work for me, and it's a bit hard to put my finger on why (but I'll try). Paul Yoon's novel captivated me at first. The beginning of the book is centered around three young people in 1969 in Laos during a time when the region was completely torn apart by conflict and bombings. The first chapter had a lot of depth and interesting details, and then as I kept reading, I felt like it just didn't go anywhere.

Each chapter of the novel is told from a different character's perspective, and I think this might be why it went off the rails for me. Each POV sounded way too similar, and there didn't seem to be enough character development for the later perspectives. I also felt like the dialogue was really unrealistic - it often felt too writerly and not at all how people would speak to one another. This kept taking me away from the story so that I often felt disconnected from what was happening.

There was a lot of violence (often graphic gore) but I understand the need for this when discussing war-torn countries and the harm that's inflicted upon them. But this aspect did make the book tough to read at times. My brain often had a hard time focusing, because I felt like the structure and the writing style just didn't mesh well with my preferences. The saving grace was that this book was short, so I was able to get through it - just wouldn't recommend it to other readers.

This powerful novel blew me away. I went into this without any real knowledge of Laos, let alone what life could have been like there in the 1960s. This story offers a startling picture of the time and place, but it is the intimate details and the perfectly rendered characters that keep you turning the pages. It is a painful read, but well worth it. Definitely need to go back and read some of Paul Yoon’s other books. Let me know if you have recommendations.

I’m judging a 2020 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory
glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

Beautiful book....

The premise of the book is extremely interesting. I really liked that heartbreaking story about the war torn society.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for my free digital copy!

I was interested in reading this book because I recently read a history of Asian America that included how US involvement in military conflict in Laos in the 60s involved Hmong soldiers, among others. The characters in this story were directly impacted by this conflict, and they suffered deep trauma. Each section of the novel focuses on one person (though it's all told in third person), and I appreciated the specific stories that added up to a larger impression of the impact of the war. It was an affecting, atmospheric novel. For me, the structure was difficult to follow, and I kept losing the thread of how people were connected to one another. The language is beautiful and effective, but the difficult content and confusing structure detracted from my overall experience. That said, I'm glad I read it because I had never encountered this author before. I definitely want to read more from him, especially his short story collection, The Mountain.

Reading this book also made me think of a company I came across about a year ago: Article 22. This organization employs Laotian artisans to create jewelry from Vietnam War shrapnel, and proceeds go toward cleaning land mines that still exist in the countryside.

This book should have been right up my alley, but unfortunately I did not really connect with it. I found it very disjointed and I was expecting more about the relationship among the three orphans, but they were together only in the first part of the book and even then they could have been strangers. Interesting for its treatment of the story about the havoc caused by the unexploded bombs in Laos and the dislocation caused by war, but the book moved me only rarely. I have rounded my 3.5 star rating up to 4 because of the subject matter. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

Suspenseful and elegant storytelling in this novel kept me turning pages even through traumatic and heartbreaking scenes. The book, centered in wartime Laos, is organized in sections and spans decades. Omniscient narration allows focus to vary among a vivid cast of characters. Yoon’s powerful prose unlocks deeply human themes: childhood interrupted war, legacies of trauma that burden generations around the globe, cultural endurance, healing, loss, migration. This brilliant rendering of war’s lasting impacts provides provocative topics for discussion and literary windows into an underreported segment of history.

DNF @ 13%

I mean, the synopsis about three orphans in Laos 1960s is very intriguing. Unfortunately, the story was all over the place and the narrative, vague. The characters felt distant and there was some point that I lost interest, not finding purpose in keep reading this book. That being said, the writing was decent. RUN ME TO EARTH might not be for me but I can see that it could work for many readers.

Having been a young teen when the Vietnam war broke out, I was interested in reading this
historical fiction novel about three orphaned teens living in Laos. They survived the war by helping in a hospital and became very useful and also very close to each other. When the Americans pulled out of the war and the helicopters came to evacuate, nothing went as planned and the three friends became separated. The book explores each one’s life after the Communist take over and we learn of their individual struggles and suffering. Many years later the book explores the effort made to learn what eventual happened to these teens.
For me, the story started off strong and was interesting and suspenseful. The middle seemed to drag a bit and it took me a while to finish the book. I did feel it was a worthwhile story but it just was not a page turner for me. I received an ARC of the book from the publisher and Netgalley. This is my unbiased review.

I received a reviewer copy of Run Me to Earth by Paul Yoon from the publisher Simon & Schuster from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 Stars rounded to 4 Stars.

What It’s About: This book follows a group of friends who grew up in 1960's Laos among a sea of endless bombs during the Vietnamese War.

What I Loved: Yoon is a fabulous writer and he can really tell a story. At times this book is unputdownable because of the beautiful language and dialogue. This book is written from various characters perspectives and each one reads kind of like a short story and they are quite fascinating. I also loved learning about a setting that I knew nothing about and found it really rather interesting and heart breaking.

What I didn’t like so much: This book was hard to follow in a way, while each story can stand on its own individually, seeing how they are all tied together is difficult, as is figuring out the significance of the characters. This takes away from the book

Who Should Read It: People who love literary fiction. People who want a unique cultural and historical setting to their novels. People who enjoy short story collections.

General Summary: A novel that follows three orphans in Vietnam War era Laos.

This is a moving novel that revolves around three orphan teenagers in 1969 trying to survive amid the chaos and bombings in Laos. The orphans have a strong bond formed by their loss, but eventually become separated and the book takes us all the way to current times as we slowly learn of their fate. Author’s gorgeous prose in telling this heartbreaking story is powerful !

Yoon tells the story of three friends torn from their homes and families by the Laotian conflict in the 1960’s. The three children, Noi, Pranny, and Alisak have taken refuge in the home of a Frenchman who fled the violence. The home, damaged by bombs and the humid climate, has been turned into a field hospital. Helping the doctors and coming face to face with the horror of war, the children cope as best they can. They all plan to leave with the doctors hoping the helicopters will take them to France or to Thailand. Only Alisak makes it onto the helicopter, leaving the other two behind when a hidden bomb destroys Noi’s motorcycle. Alisak makes it to France, not knowing what happened to the others. The daughter of a woman for whom Alisak cared in the Laos hospital escapes to New York and is determined to find Alisak and tell him about Noi’s death and the capture of Pranny and the doctor. I found hope and simple beauty and caring amidst the chaos and violence of war and finished the book with far more hope than I expected to find.

In Run Me to Earth, Paul Yoon tells the story of three teenagers struggling to survive in 1960's Laos at a time when American artillery fire has made the Vietnam border-nation a perilous place to live. Pranny, Noi, and Alisak find some luck when a hospital begs their services transporting supplies in exchange for a roof and food, but all of that is turned upside-down when the hospital is evacuated.

The world Paul Yoon creates in his novel is fascinating; most of what I have learned about the Vietnam War is centered on the experience of American troops. Through Alisak, Pranny, and Noi, we gain the perspective of three native citizens who are suffering the collateral damage of war in the region. The world Yoon creates is transportive - it is not difficult to imagine Laos or the terror its citizens live with every day. Several scenes were absolutely harrowing.

I did have some difficulty tracking the characters; there are several and even the perspective characters shift at the end of the novel. This is not a common issue for me to experience and I can't really point a finger at what specifically caused me to have trouble. Overall, this was an interesting and immersive read from a often omitted piece of history.

A beautiful, heartbreaking, emotional, traumatic story of three orphans. Wonderfully written and simultaneously cruel and hopeful, Run Me To Earth is a fantastic portrayal of that time period. I learned a lot of history and was swept up in this complicated story of survival. The author captures these tragic stories in a lovely, poetic way. 4⭐️ Thank you to the publisher for the advance reader in exchange for my honest review.

This stunning book will break your heart. Are you old enough to remember watching the helicopters evacuating Saigon? My blood chilled as I read the scene in this book of the hospital evacuation, and realized that the self-made family would be split as some were saved and others were left. The search to reunite would continue their whole lives. Just like someone who has lost a limb, the ghost memory of the loved one will continue to remain a constant but missing part of their lives.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I requested this book due to its wildly underrepresented period of history and POV. I cannot say I’ve ever read another book set in Laos and I’m glad I had the opportunity to read this in exchange for a free review from the publisher.
I will say I had a hard time getting into this book, partly because of my own circumstances, partly because of ignorance about the historical and political situation of Laos during that time period, and partly because of how this book is written. I could almost consider this a book of short stories closely related, similar to Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. This book was about a group of kids who knew each other, but each section follows a different character during a different time period. It was somewhat hard to follow until I could sit down and read a full 100 pages.
I will say the writing is good, but I didn’t get to know the characters very well, however I think that was on purpose.
I think this book is worth reading for those interested in what happened in Laos in the 60’s and beyond.

5 stars. Run Me To Earth follows the beautiful, yet tragic, depicted story of three orphaned children and their mentor in Laos in the 1960’s during war-torn Vietnam, to 2018. While their story is deeply heartbreaking, it’s also filled full of love and hope. It’s an important story that speaks volumes, and is so profound I found myself slowing down while reading as sure not to miss anything, stopping only to catch my breath. The effects of war on the lives of humans was skillfully depicted making a lasting impression on me that I’m still absorbing. Paul Yoon’s fascinating story about history I never knew existed is one I’ll be re-reading in the future. I’ve already purchased a hard cover copy for my keeper shelf. A must read.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for this arc!

RUN ME TO EARTH by Paul Yoon may be a little book but it has a BIG HEART! With poetic language Yoon depicts war on a human scale by exploring how wars effects people over time and place and how those effects can be immediate or take lifetimes to be fully revealed.

The story begins in Loas in the 1960s during the Vietnam War when the Communist Pathet Lao were in conflict with the USA backed Royal Lao Government. Centering on three orphans who assist at a makeshift hospital, we follow as their lives and fates diverge and intertwine over the decades after they are evacuated from the country. Yoon sets the tone for the story with a potent Author’s Note in which he states the fact that the USA and RLG dropped more than 580,000 bombs on Loas which equals one bombardment every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for 9 years straight. Let that fact sink in. That is the world that RUN ME TO EARTH begins in.

Yoon’s writing is poetic with no sensationalism. The relationships and events captured in the book are both beautiful and tragic. Though wonderfully written, the narrative jumps in time were sometimes difficult to follow. I found myself having to reread passages realizing I had missed important points or couldn’t tell what time period we were in.

I’ll be the first to admit that I have many holes in my knowledge and sadly I did not know about the atrocities faced by the people of Loas in the 1960s and 70s. RUN ME TO EARTH was compelling because it was not a history of this conflict, instead Yoon focuses our attention on the human tragedy of this war. The book depicts how people displaced and scarred (physically, mentally, emotionally) by war are effected over the course of their lifetimes.

Published by Simon & Schuster on January 28, 2020

Many fine novels have been set during the Vietnam War, telling a brutal story from the perspective of American soldiers. Less common are stories told from Asian perspectives. The war took far more lives of Vietnamese than Americans. It spilled into neighboring countries, disrupted families, and destabilized societies. The central characters in Run Me to Earth are Laotians whose lives were changed — or ended — by the war.

Laos was littered with American cluster bombs during the war in an effort to close supply lines used by the North Vietnamese. Unexploded bombs the size of baseballs continue to kill Laotians fifty years later. The war sparked a conflict in Laos between the Pathet Lao and the Royal Lao Government. The CIA supported the RLG in a futile effort to thwart the spread of communism. Part of that support consisted of training Hmong fighters to resist the Pathet Lao.

The initial focus of Run Me to Earth is on a Laotian hospital that helps wounded Hmong fighters and civilians. In exchange for American dollars, Prany and Alisak work in the hospital. They were recruited to the job at the age of sixteen. Prany’s sister Noi is a year younger than Prany.

The three live together in a nearby farmhouse that was once owned by a Frenchman who is known to locals as the Tobacco Captain. When Noi was twelve, the Tobacco Captain hired her to help in the kitchen at a party. Noi will not talk about that day, but a later chapter gives us a glimpse of Noi’s experience.

In 1969, when Prany and Alisak are seventeen, American planes arrive to evacuate the hospital workers. A doctor named Vang expects Prany, Alisak, and Noi to join him on the plane. Much of the novel recounts their harrowing journey toward evacuation, a journey that only one of those four characters will complete. That character makes it to France, where he stays in the home of the Tobacco Captain’s brother.

Five years later, the story follows a woman named Auntie who, for a price, smuggles Laotians into refugee camps in Thailand. She yearns for the optimistic time, before the appearance of American aid, when villagers did not realize they lived in poverty. She hears about two familiar characters who have been captured by the Pathet Lao and brutally interrogated. Three years later, the story follows those two characters after their release. They are assigned to work on a village farm, but they have other ideas about where and how they want to live. The meaning of freedom in the midst of war and poverty is one of the novel’s important themes.

Toward the end of the novel we learn about a sacrifice that a character makes so that a girl named Khit can leave Laos. She eventually makes her way to America with a couple who pretend to be her parents. Her new family assimilates as immigrants will do when given the chance, eventually opening a restaurant in Poughkeepsie, yet Khit lives in constant fear that her new life will be taken from her. Fifteen years later she travels to France so that she can keep a promise she made on the day she was smuggled out of Laos. There she learns partial answers to questions the reader will have about the fate of other characters.

Tension becomes palpable as the primary characters struggle to escape the lives that shackle them. They often do so in unexpected ways. Although a work of fiction, Run Me to Earth is infused with details that remind the reader of the tragedy that resulted from America’s intervention in Vietnam and neighboring countries. At the same time, the story invites the reader to make connections to other tragedies — of war, of oppression, of prejudice — all stemming from weaknesses in the human spirit that are partially offset by those who find the strength to resist.

The novel tells a powerful and moving story about characters who make difficult choices under unimaginable circumstances. One choice involves violent retribution, an understandable act even if it is morally questionable. On other occasions, the characters make selfless choices that place the welfare of their friends above their own. Notwithstanding the larger issues that permeate the story, Paul Yoon’s focus on ordinary people in an extraordinary situation gives the novel its heart. Friends are lost and new friends are made. Lives change but survivors endure because others sacrifice. It is impossible not to be wrenched by their pain and inspired by their fundamental decency.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED