The Principal's Daughter by Russ Katz

 

Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing

Publication date: September 12 2016

Pages: 384

This is a review of an ebook that I bought

Years ago, author Russ Katz walked into a hair salon to let his hair cut, not knowing that this would lead to a book about the hairstylist who was cutting his hair. This woman was Tran Le Kim Tuyen, who fled from Saigon years after the war, and in this book she tells about her life, and her escape from Vietnam to the USA.

Kim grows up during the war in a South Vietnamese village near Saigon. Her father is the principal of the school in the village. First the war doesn't play a big part in her village, untill one day lots of American trucks with soldiers drive across the house,and her village becomes the center of the Tet Offensive when she is still a young girl. As the family is pro-American, they see what the Americans do in their village. Besides the fighting that takes place he Americans take care of medications and medical care for the people of the village, they help build playgrounds and supply the people with food among lots of other things. But everything changes for the family when her mom gets ill, and the family struggles to survive, especially when Saigon falls and the communists take over, then everything is changed for good and for the worst. Random raids and bombings, people that are send to reeducation camps for nothing (having a paper in a flower vase to hold the flowers was already reason enough to get someone arrested) awful bombings, and the constant treat of the communists, and in the middle Kim and her family try to make the best of it. 

Kim tries to escape to America where her sister already lives, but then the communistic bureacratic nightmare begins, and it takes years when she can finally leave Vietnam. 

I have read many other books about and written by Vietnamese refugees. This is another gripping and moving book in this topic. It truly moved me as a reader, and my deep respect for the Vietnamese refugees only grew with reading this book. This book shows aspects that I never read before. And this book was different then any other book about the Vietnam war and refugees that I have read so far. I thought the author did a great job telling Kim's story, it only leaves me one question, why isn't Kim named as one of the authors on the cover at is her story that is told from her point of view? 

This is a book not to miss!!