Run Me to Earth

“Yoon makes us care deeply about these adolescents and what happens to them. For all that he eventually reveals, some details are forever dropped between the shifting plates of survivors’ memories. That’s cruel, but like everything else here, entirely true to the lives of people scattered by war.” ---Washington Post Book Review

Alisak, Prany, and Noi—three orphans united by devastating loss—must do what is necessary to survive the perilous landscape of 1960s Laos. When they take shelter in a bombed out field hospital, they meet a doctor dedicated to helping the wounded at all costs. Soon the teens are serving as motorcycle couriers, delicately navigating their bikes across the fields filled with unexploded bombs, beneath the indiscriminate barrage from the sky. We follow their grueling days of rescuing civilians and searching for medical supplies, until their evacuation on the last helicopters leaving the country. It’s a move with irrevocable consequences—and sets them on disparate and treacherous paths across the world.

Paul Yoon was born in New York City. His first book, ONCE THE SHORE, was selected as a New York Times Notable Book and was a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a 5 under 35 award from the National Book Foundation, and a fellowship from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, he lives in Sanford, Florida.

Additional Information:

• Author: Paul Yoon
• Published 2021
• 288 pages, softcover
• 7 X 5 inches