Review: Run Me to Earth

by Paul Yoon (Simon & Schuster, 2020)

Suspenseful and elegant storytelling in Run Me to Earth kept me turning pages through traumatic and heartbreaking scenes. In the United States, it's a lesser-known historical fact—despite American involvement—that the country of Laos was heavily bombed from 1964 to 1973 during a complex power conflict in Southeast Asia. Paul Yoon, in an author’s note, explains the magnitude of devastation: "...the equivalent of one bombardment every eight minutes, twenty-four hours a day, for nine years."

This ambitious novel excavates that era and explores how ordinary civilians cope with war's disruption and violence. Three orphaned youth—Prany, his sister Noi and their best friend, Alisak—exist in the margins, dodging bombs and scavenging to survive. They're recruited by a physician named Dr. Vang and a cadre of nurses operating a makeshift medical clinic in a ruined French tobacco planter’s mansion. The nurses send the three teens out on motorcycles to find supplies and transport injured victims through war-scarred terrain. In exchange for running dangerous errands, the orphans gain temporary living quarters and some cash.

Yoon's powerful prose unlocks deeply human themes: childhood interrupted by war, legacies of trauma that burden future generations, cultural endurance, loss, healing, migration. This book offers provocative topics for group discussion and literary windows into an underreported segment of history. Read full review on BookBrowse.