More on the book.

Sitting in a California courtroom, seventeen-year-old Nou Lee’s mind reels with what she is about to do. What she must do to survive. As she reflects on the splintered path that led to this moment, readers are taken back to 1978 when her Hmong family was forced to flee Laos after the communists took over the country. After languishing in a Thai refugee camp for three years, the Lees finally resettled in the United States. Painting a vivid picture of the Hmong immigrants’ experience leaving their homeland and beginning anew in a strange and foreign culture, Across the Mekong River is a powerful and deeply moving story.

Excerpt:

We could not go back to our country.  We could not go on with this half-life, trapped in Ban Vinai like ghosts caught between two worlds.  Yet no one wanted to acknowledge the reality of our position.  Uncle Boua said he was too old to start over.  He and Chor remained hopeful of returning to Laos.  General Vang Pao continued to send letters and tapes from America urging our people to remain in Thailand, to continue the struggle.  It was a delicate matter with Yer as well.  She often talked about our village in the peaceful hills of Laos, an ideal that had not existed for more than twenty years.  She held on to the vision of a simple existence free of war and persecution and suffering.  We would be closer to our boys, she said, closer to the clouds and heavens.  Even I sometimes indulged in these fantasies.  It seemed so near we could almost touch it.  Just across the Mekong River.