Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin

 

Publisher: Henry Holt

On Sale Date: March 21, 2023

Pages: 240

I reviewed a review copy from the publisher through Netgalley.com

Sixteen year old Anh is the oldest child of her family After the fall of Saigon, the family decides to flee Vietnam, but not together. First, Anh and her younger brothers Thanh and Minh go, her parents and other siblings will soon follow in another boat. But things go different as planned. The escape and journey by boat of Anh, Thanh and Minh arrives safely in Hong Kong, where they land in an overcrowded refugee camp. They wait there for their parents and other siblings, untill one sad day when they are informed and asked to identify bodies, bodies that belong to their parents and younger siblings, whose escape from Vietnam costs them their lives. From now on, the three siblings are completely on their own, alone in their grief and alone in their attempt to survive, and sixteen year old Anh becomes the caretaker of her younger brothers. In the following years, with the help of refugee aid programs, the three children land in the UK, where they also land in refugee and resettlement centers, and eventually get their own little place in London. In the midst of the Tatcher era where refugees are not welcomed very friendly.  Anh starts to work in a clothing factory, while her brothers are at school, one succesfull and the other struggling and dropping out of school. Meanwhile, the reader also gets to know what one other little brother, Dao, who perished at sea sees from above as some kind of spirit thinks of it all and how he looks at his siblings from another point. This truly gave the book another layer, and it already is a very gripping and moving story.

I was truly moved by this book, which tells the realistic story of so many Vietnamese boat refugees, a story that still is actual. It truly was heartbreaking when the three young children get to hear that their family didn't survive their boat journey, and it was just so difficult for the three of them to pick up their live again. With every book about Vietnamese boat people that I read ( and I have read quite a lot of books about this topic ) my already deep respect for them grows even more. How they where threated in the UK by Thatcher, who promised a lot, but just heartless worked against the plight of theVietnamese boat people documents showed later, just gave me the cold chills and you truly wonder why Tatcher made these kind of decisions.

This book is just moving, revealing, and written beautifully and it is a book I recommend!