A Year Without Home

In a world that craves under­stand­ing, there’s a book for that. This is one of those books. The finest kind.

In a house on the moun­tain­side in Laos that pro­vides a home to twen­ty-one peo­ple, grand­moth­er, her chil­dren, and their chil­dren, Gao Sheng is con­tent. She loves where she lives and the peo­ple who live with her.

The air smells like
trees after the rain,
like wet grass
with jig­gly dewdrops
that tick­le my toes,
like sun­shine and smiles—
and I almost for­get about the war,

The war that’s been here
for years
    and years.

With descrip­tions that will evoke mem­o­ries for every read­er, Bida­nia helps us see every­thing about the moun­tains in Laos that makes it beloved. I imag­ine she care­ful­ly chose each word to fit into this sto­ry because I found myself appre­ci­at­ing how apt her phras­ing is, her focus draw­ing us in, the music of her lan­guage singing to me. It’s a nov­el in verse. For those of you who are sigh­ing, already decid­ing this isn’t for you … wait!

There is such a strong sto­ry here that you will be turn­ing pages avid­ly. The time is May 1975. The Viet­nam War is draw­ing to a close. The Laot­ian sol­diers who fought with the Amer­i­cans are wor­ried because Laos is about to fall to the com­mu­nists. Their lives are in danger.

Eleven-year-old Gao Sheng’s father is the youngest cap­tain in the Noble Army of Laos. The com­mu­nists would like to round up all the sol­diers who aid­ed the Amer­i­cans and re-edu­cate them. Get­ting word ahead of time, her father asks the entire fam­i­ly to pack their belong­ings, only what they can car­ry, to escape to Thai­land for the time being. They must leave behind their beloved dog and horse and school and some of their rel­a­tives who don’t see a threat.

This is the sto­ry of their escape, which is not smooth, and the courage the fam­i­ly assumed when they had to. Even­tu­al­ly, they wind up in two refugee camps, the first Nam Phong, the sec­ond Ban Vinai. They are there for too long, but Gao Sheng’s par­ents hope to return to their home in Laos so they turn down relo­ca­tion offers to oth­er coun­tries. Life in a refugee camp is filled with new expe­ri­ences, dan­ger, laugh­ter, and new skills.

Through­out the sto­ry, we learn that Gao Sheng is tired of her role as babysit­ter for her younger sib­lings, she is unhap­py that her younger broth­er Yia is favored because he is the boy in the fam­i­ly, and she is bored with doing chores. When she speaks up for her­self, express­ing what she would like to do, she dis­plays a dif­fer­ent kind of courage and her par­ents are not unreasonable.

Told in the first per­son, I was sur­prised to learn in the author’s note that this is a fic­tion­al sto­ry based on V.T. Bidania’s old­er sister’s expe­ri­ences. V.T. was too young to remem­ber much when all of this hap­pened. I was sur­prised because the feel­ings Gao Sheng express­es are so inte­ri­or, so self-exam­in­ing. And they are feel­ings many of us have, no mat­ter where we grew up, regard­less of how old we are.

When you read this book, you will see this world through dif­fer­ent eyes, from a heart that is young and hope­ful … which is what we all need. Hope.