Run Me to Earth - by Paul Yoon (Paperback)

About the Book

From award-winning author Yoon comes a beautiful, aching novel about three kids orphaned in 1960s Laos--and how their destinies are entwined across decades.ades.

Book Synopsis

From award-winning author Paul Yoon comes a "spellbinding" (The Washington Post) novel about three kids orphaned in 1960s Laos--and how their destinies are entwined across decades, anointed by Hernan Diaz as "one of those rare novels that stays with us to become a standard with which we measure other books."

Alisak, Prany, and Noi--three orphans united by devastating loss--must do what is necessary to survive the perilous landscape of 1960s Laos. When they take shelter in a bombed out field hospital, they meet Vang, a doctor dedicated to helping the wounded at all costs. Soon the teens are serving as motorcycle couriers, delicately navigating their bikes across the fields filled with unexploded bombs, beneath the indiscriminate barrage from the sky.

In a world where the landscape and the roads have turned into an ocean of bombs, we follow their grueling days of rescuing civilians and searching for medical supplies, until Vang secures their evacuation on the last helicopters leaving the country. It's a move with irrevocable consequences--and sets them on disparate and treacherous paths across the world.

Spanning decades, this "richly layered" (The New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice) book weaves together storylines laced with beauty and cruelty. Paul Yoon's "greatest skill lies in crafting subtle moments that underline the strange and specific sadness inherent to trauma" (Time) and this book is a breathtaking historical feat and a fierce study of the powers of hope, perseverance, and grace.

Review Quotes

Time Magazine's Must-Read Books of 2020

"Richly layered....Throughout the novel, beauty and violence coexist in a universe that seems by turns cruel and wondrous....Yoon has stitched an intense meditation on the devastating nature of war and displacement."
-- New York Times Book Review (Editor's Choice)

"[Yoon] writes with a soft, measured hand. He calmly builds memorable scenes even when events turn violent."
-- Associated Press

"If you truly believe in the transformative power of literature then you must read this book. Run Me to Earth is a genuine masterpiece; fierce, tender, wise, earth-shattering, pulsating with love and hope."
-- MIRIAM TOEWS, author of Women Talking

"With Run Me to Earth, Paul Yoon proves, yet again, that he is a master at finding depth of emotion in formal restraint and discovering the timeless core in the most urgent issues of our day. This is one of those rare novels that stays with us to become, over the years, a standard with which we measure other books."
-- HERNAN DIAZ, author of In the Distance, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize

"In another life, Yoon (The Mountain, 2017, etc.) might have been a sculptor, carving the excess off his creations until they're perfect. In this decades-spanning examination of the survival of three orphans with the bad luck to have been born into the ruins of a battlefield, he's stretching his abilities while still writing with deliberate, almost vigilant care... Yoon's imaginative prose and affection for his characters make the story larger than a look at the ways people survive... Another masterpiece in miniature about the unpredictable directions a life can take."
-- KIRKUS REVIEWS (starred review)

"Spellbinding....With his panoramic vision of the displacements of war, Yoon reminds us of the people never considered or accounted for in the halls of power."
-- The Washington Post

"Yoon again exemplifies his unparalleled ability to create a quietly spectacular narrative that reveals the unfathomable worst and unwavering best of humanity; the result here provides mesmerizing gratification."
-- BOOKLIST (STARRED REVIEW)

"Yoon has the ability to conjure up an entire world in a phrase."
--Asian Review of Books

"Yoon, ever the elegant and penetrating writer, coolly delivers a devastating sense of what it's like to be in the midst of war...Yoon (Snow Hunters), ever the elegant and penetrating writer, coolly delivers a devastating sense of what it's like to be in the midst of war."
-- Library Journal (starred review)

"Yoon's artfully orchestrated narrative illuminates this loudest, harshest, most chaotic of situations with restraint and elegance, finding and tracing an emotional thread that weaves the story into the reader's heart...This unique work of historical fiction could not be more timely, or more timeless."
-- Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Yoon's greatest skill lies in crafting subtle moments that underline the strange and specific sadness inherent to trauma....As children around the world continue to grow up surrounded by violence and war, authors like Yoon seek to understand how experiencing those horrors shapes the adults they eventually become. And in Run Me to Earth, those horrors are scattered like unexploded bombs, waiting to go off at any time."
-- Time Magazine

About the Author

Paul Yoon is the author of four previous works of fiction: Once the Shore, which was a New York Times Notable Book; Snow Hunters, which won the Young Lions Fiction Award; The Mountain, which was an NPR Best Book of the Year; and Run Me to Earth, which was one of Time's Must-Read Books of 2020 and longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he lives in the Hudson Valley, New York. .