This is a fictional, but very personal, account about the war in Vietnam told though the eyes of Dang, a middle class Vietnamese. His experiences encompasses the Vietnam war from the fall of Dien Bien Phu, when he was a boy living in Hanoi, until the fall of Saigon where his family had moved when Vietnam was divided North and South. What Dang describes gives a perspective of the Vietnamese people's travails in the war and a point of view rarely presented to Americans about their involvement in Vietnam. Nearly all of the American soldiers who fought in Vietnam knew little or nothing about the people or the country and still do not to this day. This book is important because it will allow Americans to "walk a mile in the shoes of a Vietnamese." The story will help the reader to understand what it was like for a Vietnamese family to endure the trauma of the changes from 1954 to the end of the war in Vietnam. The writer describes the ruthlessness of the North Vietnamese Communists, the struggle of the South Vietnamese government to govern and the attitude of the Americans. These factors all combined to create a massive disruption of Vietnamese lives, culture and their future. Dang perseveres through the tumultuous events affecting his family to not only survive but to build his future in an uncertain world.