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

This epic novel from Paul Yoon is beyond powerful. The story of three children in Laos, and following through the decades, this is the kind of book and story that last lifetimes.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this wonderful book.

This is a book about war, displacement, and the resiliency and fragility of community under dire circumstances. I enjoyed the exploration of memories created under stressful conditions and how they can sustain or delude a person throughout the rest of their life. I would recommend this book to fans of All the Light We Cannot See.

I sat here for a moment after finishing the last word just absorbing everything I had read. It's a hauntingly beautiful story that will wrap itself around your heart and squeeze. Lyrical and mesmerizing. This book needs a spot on your keeper shelf and on mine. Happy reading!

After a slow start, Run Me to Earth gained momentum and managed to invest me in the lives of 3 young Lao refugees conscripted to help in a field hospital during US bombardment of Laos in the late 60s and 70s in return for food and shelter. They are looked after mainly by a doctor who escapes along with them. Told over decades and by figures only peripheral to their flight, it's a moving and important story of the ravages of war.

This starts as the story of Alisak and siblings Pranny and Noi- three orphans who find themselves working at an ad hoc farmhouse hospital during the war in Laos. They are, sadly,expert at marking unexploded ordinance and in riding motorbikes to rescue the wounded and bring supplies. It's also the story of Auntie and Vang, best friends from childhood. He's a doctor at the farmhouse and she, as things get worse in Laos, is a people mover. And it's the story of Khit, whose mother was brought to the hospital grievously wounded and who is later found by Pranny when he is released from custody. Beautiful language makes this sad story filled with sacrifice an easier read than it might otherwise be. You'll never look at a baseball quite the same way once you read how Khit sees them. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. This is a rare and valuable novel about the war in Laos, the impact of bombing there and the spirit of its people. It's a worthy read and a fast one, simply because you'll want to know what happens to the characters.

Paul Yoon’s novel, Run Me to the Earth, begins in the 1960s in Laos during the Vietnam War. The author’s note at the beginning sets the stage for three orphans, Alisak, Prany, and Noi, who learn to navigate their motorcycles between the unexploded cluster bombs or “bombies” to help Vang, a doctor dedicated to helping the wounded. They run missions helping rescue the injured and finding medical supplies.

The book begins in an old farmhouse with the three friends asking each other where they go at night. Prany chooses a very large ship while his sister Noi wants to be where there is a very large fireplace. Pressured to come up with an answer Alisak says, “I go to the desert.” The question of where they go in the evenings or in their dreams is an effort to take their minds off the detonation flashes that become closer and louder and the growing number of suffering people. On other nights they name other places, but never home.

Vang helps them evacuate on the last helicopters leaving the country, and they begin separate treks finding their way in other places. The body of the book follows the three as they diverge, making their way in worlds as strange to them as the one littered with “bombies” until the last chapter finds Alisak in Sa Tuna, Spain in 2018.

The title comes from a W. S. Merwin quote, “I have worn the fur of a wolf and the shepherd’s dogs have run me to the earth.” I read the book, to be released January 28, in an advance reading copy furnished by Net Galley. While the book is fictional, the truth in it is unmistakable as the reader dodges land mines with the orphans on their motorcycles and follows with their escape from the land, their lives marked by uncertainty even after they are away from the war zone. The book is not a light read, but the writing is beautiful with a vivid picture of what it would be like to live daily in a war-torn area and the difficulty of fitting in somewhere else after escaping.

Thank you NetGalley.

This was just a small excerpt and it left me wanting more! I can't wait to read it.

This book shook me! It was horrifying and beautiful and artistic and so so sad. Written in the voices of 3 orphans in Laos during a time of war and bombs, this book took some understanding because it is written in 3 voices, but the plot lines are worth following because the payout is big!

I love stories than span lifetimes or multiple decades and this did that in a beautiful way. Some gorgeous writing and a lot of adventure makes for a good read.

In 1969 a secret bombing mission devastated the people and land of Laos. Paul Yoon's novel, Run Me to Earth, focuses on three young orphans, Alisak, Prany, and Noi. The young teenagers came from villages near the famous Plain of Jars, close to Phonsavan. The kids' savior is a doctor, Vang, who gives them shelter in a once opulent house owned by a French ex-pat who has since fled the area.

Alisak, Prany, and Noi use motorcycles left behind by the Frenchman to gather supplies and even bring back wounded villagers to the big house so they can be treated and have a place to heal and rest. These kids create a kind of patchwork life and describe the environment and their feelings, ones that I can smell and touch in my mind from the time I spend in Thailand starting in the sixties. The kids become experts on finding land mines and marking them for everyone's safety.

This novel took me back to a time when we couldn't control the horrific deeds of a corrupt president. Most of the dirty work took place in secret, late at night. Nixon's impeachment and resignation did nothing to bring back thousands who were lost, people who spent years in refugee camps, and children who became orphans and roamed the west trying to carve out a life. It was sickening then, and it is today.

PY wrote as if he was there. His research is impeccable, and his ability to bring it all to life took my breath away. We believed, after that, these kinds of dirty tricks war maneuvers would not happen again. How wrong we were that there is no shortage of morally bankrupt leaders in our country, fifty years on, today.

Thank you to Paul Yoon, Simon and Schuster, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC.

We all have those books we are super looking forward to. Waiting and more waiting, and then the book releases and, then, sometimes it's just not everything we thought it'd be. That was Run Me to Earth for me. I'd was really excited about this book, and then about 80 pages in, I decided it was a DNF. The story is that of three young orphans and it takes place in 1960s Laos. To me, there's not much more compelling awesomeness. But once I started to read (and to be clear, the writing is on point), I knew if I kept reading, I'd be disappointed. So I stopped. Maybe the next one from Paul Yoon will pull me in further.

Run Me to Earth comes out 1.28.2020.

2/5 Stars

"Run Me to Earth" by Paul Yoon is the heartbreaking story of three orphaned teenagers and their struggle for survival in war-torn Laos. Alisak, Noi, and Prany are recruited by a make-shift hospital where they are tasked with making runs on motorbikes across the minefields for hospital supplies. When the time finally comes to evacuate, the characters are forced to go their separate ways and the rest of the book follows the different paths they take. This book opened my eyes to the horrors of a conflict I knew virtually nothing about. It was simply written, but intense and packed a huge emotional punch. The author's use of descriptive language painted a vivid picture of the war-ravaged landscape. This novel makes clear that the true victims of war are the innocent civilians caught up in its midst, especially the children.

Run Me To Earth, this compassionate, powerful novel, concerns three young people whose lives were uprooted in Laos in the late 1960's. Their entwined fates are presented in prose so evocative it's impossible to believe Paul Yoon did not witness the events first-hand. The carpet bombings of Laos, one of the most shameful actions by the Americans in their misguided efforts to rout out North Vietnamese supply lines during the Vietnam war, reverberates through the present day. That there is still live ordinance in the countryside, has been acknowledged by President Obama. Also, with relation to events of today, desertion of a friendly force, the Hmong, echoes the recent desertion of the Kurds. Don't be fooled by the relative short length of this novel. It packs a wallop.

"Run Me to Earth" by Paul Yoon showed a lot of promise and potential, but I just couldn't follow the storyline. The writing was decent, but I was so confused about what was going on. The plot kept tripping me up. Even the synopsis had me scratching my head. I always try to give historical fiction a chance, but these kind of long-winded stories just never make an impact with me. This genre is easily forgettable and overhyped. The three orphaned-children were interchangeable. I couldn't keep them straight. I just felt depressed and underwhelmed in the end. I don't think novels about the atrocities of war are my cup of tea. Also, this book lacked emotion. I kept waiting for this big, profound moment to happen and it never did.

Thank you, Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for the advance copy.

The edges of an active war zone are just as dangerous as the war zone itself, especially during the Vietnam War. The author’s note in Run Me to Earth, by Paul Yoon, explains that more bombs were dropped on Laos during the War than were dropped during World War II. This novel of escape and the desire for reunion begins on Laos’s Plain of Jars, at a makeshift hospital that mostly treats people who are injured by one of the unexploded bombs that cover the Laotian countryside. (Approximately one third did not explode on impact; people are still injured by them to this day.) Teenagers Alisak, Prany, and Noi—all orphans—took jobs as errand runners for the hospital. In one explosive night, they are separated from each other. The rest of the novel explains that twisted routes that the characters take to try and find each other again.

Being young children of war, Alisak, Prany, and Noi manage to find a measure of happiness and comfort at the hospital. They sleep in a tangle of limbs and constantly remind each other to be safe around the bombs. They grow as close as siblings. They’ve matured so much that they’ve taken it on themselves to keep an eye out for the doctor, Vang, who really should be taking care of them. It’s also clear that all three and the doctor are suffering from severe post-traumatic stress. They decide to leave at last after Vang gets so drunk he wanders out on to the plain, where he endangers himself (and Noi, who walked out to retrieve him) among the unexploded ordinance. Vang arranges for a helicopter to lift them out, but things go wrong the night they leave. Alisak, Prany, and Noi are scattered.

Yoon keeps the stories of these tightly focused on the characters experiences as exiles in France, or as prisoners of the Pathet Lao, or as victims of the mindless violence on the edge of the Vietnam War. I liked that this novel because it resisted easy answers and coincidences. It’s not as though the characters suddenly pop up, halfway across the world, to share a cup of coffee and catch up. Finding news of each other means following rumors, hoping that no one has changed their names, and that they can catch up before their target moves on. Run Me to Earth felt more realistic than that. Everything is a fight and nothing turns out as expected. Because of this, I felt that it honored the sacrifices and hardships of people who did everything they could to escape from Laos in the 1960s and 1970s.

So often, the story of the Vietnam War is told from the perspective of the American soldiers who fought there. We Americans hear a story of politicians throwing away lives in Vietnam, in a misguided effort to keep southeast Asia from falling to the Communists. Then we hear of their return to a divided country and their suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. We rarely hear about what happened to the Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian people who were injured and killed while the Americans, French, and North Vietnamese found back and forth across the peninsula. Run Me to Earth, with its close perspective that fleetingly references the Domino Theory, serves as a heartbreaking reminder of the collateral damage of war.

The writing is beautiful and the characters deep in this intense, wrenching story of three orphans caught up in the bombing of Laos in the late 60s. I found their stories heartbreaking and raw. This historical fiction reads so smoothly and is so captivating that I couldn’t believe how quickly it went by. The format of the book, which jumps around through several time periods tracing the characters, is a bit hard to follow at times. Overall though, this is an excellent, compelling book.

Run me to Earth by Paul Yoon is an important story to be told about what happened during the Vietnam War in Laos. The author’s note in the beginning of the book gives the actual history during this time with important facts. From 1964 to 1973 there were over 580,000 bombs that went off in Laos. Over 30% of those bombs failed to explode making the country extremely dangerous to navigate. The story starts in 1969, in Laos, during this time. It is about three lost orphans who are roaming the land not knowing where to go that would be safe. They must avoid the bombs that did not detonate to stay alive, an almost impossible feat. Noi and Prany are brother and sister and their friend is Alisak. They end up in a bombed out hospital helping Dr. Vang heal the patients who were hurt during the bombings. They become couriers on motorbikes, dodging and mapping out the bombs that did not explode. They also navigate the roads looking for food and supplies to bring back to the hospital to help heal the wounded. Each section is about each of them. The story continues after the war and ends in 2019 in Spain. For me the story began very disjointedly and I felt like the author was rambling. Then there were parts that I absolutely loved and I was riveted to the pages wanting to find out what happened next. Then again I would feel the rambling. I am not really sure how some of the characters connected. I will definitely try another novel by Yoon, because I did find parts of his writing beautiful and compelling. There was just something lacking in the story line for me. Again thank you Paul Yoon for writing about this important time in history and thank you to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was a very intense, heartbreaking, yet beautiful book.
The struggle of three teenage orphans to survive in Laos, beginning in 1969.
Tons of bombs were being dropped and many of them never detonated..a state of constant danger.
The three of them, Alisak, Prany and his sister Nori, friends and neighbors from the same neighborhood are left to care for each other and they end up at a bombed out hospital were there is the drunk doctor Vang who tries to look out for them. They learn to care for patients and make runs for hospital supplies on motorcycles.
Time comes to clear out everyone... helicopters arrive and these people get separated during the process, horrific things happen to some..the years go by, different paths taken during these times of war.
The story as a whole spans decades as we see what happened to these characters.
I knew nothing about Laos during the Vietnam War. I was made aware of much!
Fantastic author!

Thank you to Netgalley, Simon & Schuster for the ARC

Viet Nam, during the war in 1969, three teens that had grown up together help out in a field hospital by picking up patients, supplies and labeling mine fields. I really wanted to like this novel but by 30% in I still could not follow the rambling story nor did I feel like I knew the characters at all. I kept thinking it would get better/easier but it did not. Thanks anyway, for the early read.