Run Me to Earth

December 9, 2019
Yoon (The Mountain) asks whether anyone can truly survive the ruins of war in this sparely written gem. In 1969, inhabitants of war-ravaged Laos struggle with political conflicts and a landscape in which civilians regularly cope with the ugly consequences of accidentally setting off unexploded ordnance. Three homeless teenagers—Alisak and brother and sister Prany and Noi, all friends since childhood—are recruited to work for a makeshift hospital set up in an abandoned mansion. The three navigate dangerous terrain on motorbikes to deliver supplies, and bond with Vang, the French doctor in charge. When the day comes to evacuate, the four are separated. Yoon masterfully weaves their divergent story lines, unveiling the different trajectories of their lives. While Alisak manages a bicycle and moped shop in the Spanish countryside, Vang and Prany are imprisoned and tortured for seven years and later plot revenge on their tormentors. Yoon’s eloquent, sensitive character study of Alisak, who deeply misses his friends well into his 60s, illustrates how the horrors of the past can linger, no matter how far one travels from the source. This is a finely wrought tale about courage and endurance. Agent: Bill Clegg, The Clegg Agency.

January 1, 2020
Three orphans struggle to survive the ruins of war-torn Laos. In another life, Yoon (The Mountain, 2017, etc.) might have been a sculptor, carving the excess off his creations until they're perfect. In this decades-spanning examination of the survival of three orphans with the bad luck to have been born into the ruins of a battlefield, he's stretching his abilities while still writing with deliberate, almost vigilant care. The Author's Note that opens the book notes that more than two million tons of bombs were dropped on Laos during the Vietnam War--with 30% failing to explode on impact. The book's viewpoint, beginning in 1969, comes from three teenage orphans living in a bombed-out hospital: Alisak, who dreams of fleeing to France; his dear friend Prany; and Prany's younger sister, Noi, all bonded by caring for each other because there's no one else to do it save for Vang, a drunken doctor who does his best. The language is as elegant and understated as always, but Yoon has chosen to fracture his narrative, often by decades. In 1970, Prany and the doctor are imprisoned for political reasons, meaning mostly no reason at all, and seven years later they're released into a world they don't recognize. Noi has a dark encounter back in 1969 before the novel leaps forward again to 1994, when Khit, another member of Alisak's motley crew, finally makes it to Paris. The story ends with a moving remembrance from Alisak in 2018, so far away from his bombed-out homeland, thinking of three children huddled around a fire. The story of the friends' wartime tragedy echoes that of children caught in dire circumstances around the globe, but Yoon's imaginative prose and affection for his characters make the story larger than a look at the ways people survive. We see a bunch of kids working together to make it out alive, and then Yoon's time jumps show that life goes on after survival and that there's meaning there, too. The characters get what we all get in the end, if we're lucky: a life, with all the joys and heartbreak that come with that. Another masterpiece in miniature about the unpredictable directions a life can take.

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Starred review from November 15, 2019
The story begins and ends with Alisak, one of three inseparable Laotian orphans in 1969, who, in the final pages, will have become an almost-content Spanish shopowner on his way to a birthday celebration in 2018. Traversing countries and continents during a half-century, Yoon's (The Mountain, 2017) second novel unfolds decades of unrelenting loss and meaningless brutality, balanced?somehow?by exquisite kindness and unbreakable bonds. In war-torn Laos, a country brutalized by more powerful nations, including the U.S., three children stay alive by working in a makeshift hospital doing whatever is necessary. For a while, Alisak and siblings Noi and Prany have the pretense of safety, barely enough food to keep living, and the protection of an idealistic doctor, Vang. Surrounded as they are by fields of unexploded cluster bombs, the threat of annihilation remains constant. When evacuation is inevitably initiated, the trio and Vang are scattered in the chaos, setting in motion sundered journeys across oceans, with survival motivated by a searing yearning for, if not reunion, then at least some semblance of understanding. Yoon again exemplifies his unparalleled ability to create a quietly spectacular narrative that reveals the unfathomable worst and unwavering best of humanity; the result here provides mesmerizing gratification.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

December 6, 2019

In 1960s Laos, heavily bombed by America during the war in Vietnam, Alisak, friend Prany, and Prany's sister Noi are orphaned as young teens and rescued by dedicated doctor Vang, who runs a patched-together field hospital in a house abandoned by a French overlord. The three orphans perform missions for the doctor, roaring around on motorbikes with a decided mix of courage, commitment, and fatalism, as NYPL Young Lion Yoon (Snow Hunters), ever the elegant and penetrating writer, coolly delivers a devastating sense of what it's like to be in the midst of war. The embattled Laotians must watch their every step or swerve of the wheel, lest one set off a mine; the orphans have ingeniously marked with sticks the routes deemed safe because they've made it through. In the end, Vang corrals his teenage couriers for a helicopter ride to safety, but fate scatters them cruelly. Their individual stories must be read (and not revealed here), but suffice to say that they don't reconnect in that Hollywood way readers will want, which makes for a better and more arresting book. Meanwhile, we meet a woman who risks all to get her starving fellow citizens past the patrol boats on the river. VERDICT Essential reading as Americans continue to grapple with its Asian adventure and for anyone interested in top-drawer literature. [See Prepub Alert, 7/15/19.]--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2019

A National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, winner of the Young Lions Fiction Award, and author most recently of the LJ best-booked The Mountain, Yoon takes us to 1960s Laos, where three orphans meet fiercely dedicated doctor Vang when they take shelter in a bombed-out field hospital. Soon they are acting as motorcycle couriers, steering carefully across fields laced with unexploded bombs as they help Vang care for the wounded. With a 60,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.