Escape from Saigon: How a Vietnam War Orphan Became an American Boy

At the end of the Vietnam War, an eight-year-old "Amerasian" boy named Long flees his country and finds a loving home with his adoptive family in Ohio. The author recounts the story of Long's life--from his birth and early childhood, shadowed by his father's abandonment and his mother's suicide, to boyhood in Saigon with his loving yet struggling grandmother who eventually makes the agonizing decision to put him up for adoption. Long, now age nine, becomes part of Operation Babylift, the US- coordinated effort that evacuated more than 2,000 children from Saigon in just three days in 1975. This photo-essay from Long's emotional point of view is interspersed with just the right amount of history. Escape is ideal for middle and upper grade classrooms studying various immigration themes including lost heritage, poverty, separation and family relations.

I also could not put this book down and had to read it straight through. Andrea Warren does a compelling and balanced job in telling Long's story. Not only do we gain real insight into how the war affected families and children in Vietnam, but we also learn the thoughts and hopes of children living in orphanages. As an adoptive mom, I found this to be a valuable book on many levels.

I read this straight through on an airplane and had to turn away from my seatmates so they wouldn't see me cry. As usual, Warren has written a compelling, evocative story about one child's experience, and in it has distilled an era and a place. The main character, Long, suffers through poverty and loss, then winds up in an orphanage where he vaccilates between grief over the loss of his own family and hope for a new mother. I got tears in my eyes as he said good-bye to his grandmother, who was his last surviving family member, and then again when he learned he had a new home in America. As a reader I felt his excitement and anxiety as the day approached when he would see his new family, and then his fear as the war moved from the countryside to the streets of his city. The drive to the bombed airport and the flight on the transport plane were terrifying, followed immediately by the joy as Long ran into the arms of his new mother. This story will stick with readers, both adults and children, leaving a personalized image of an otherwise hard-to-comprehend world event.

If you've loved Warren's earlier books about children surviving in difficult new circumstances (the two Orphan trains books, Surviving Hitler, and the one about the girl growing up on the prairie) you'll love this one, too. In this one, Long, the young hero, is half Vietnamese, half American. His survival depends on a pivotal airlift of Vietnamese orphans "tainted by the blood of the enemy" as the North Vietnamese are about to take over Saigon. But even before that the reader is caught up in the story of Long's mother and grandmother struggling to survive in a wartorn country. The story works on one level for children and on another for adults -conveying how America's withdrawal from Vietnam affects the family of a boy whose young life is shaped by war. It has all the virtues of nonfiction wrapped up in a charming, moving, and compelling story. Adults and children may want to read this one together. It's a tribute to parenting, in whatever form it comes, and to the resilience of children.

Once you start reading, you probably won't be able to put it down. This is an amazing story, with wonderful photographs. I cried twice and made my husband read it. He loved it too! Teachers will find this useful in the classroom, for teaching about the war in Vietnam, and Long/Matt is a role model we'd be delighted to see any kid follow.