- A riveting real-life story set against the tumultuous backdrop of the Vietnam War. - A vivid, sweeping memoir of a lifetime of love continuously tested yet strengthened through four decades of war and terror; a love which endured, survived and unequivocally triumphed - A rare, never-told-before, war account by in-the-trenches Vietnamese war correspondents. Authors Duong Phuc & Vu Thanh Thuy, in their own words:... "We began the first lines of this memoir in November 1979 on a police boat heading to Songkhla Refugee camp. We had just been rescued by a United Nations representative after 21 days in captivity by sea pirates on a deserted island in the Gulf of Thailand. ...We are reporters, not fiction writers. We simply want to honestly record the facts of what we heard and saw firsthand on the gruesome battlefront, in the communist re-education camps, and on the open sea. Sometimes the truth surpasses anything in the human imagination. We truthfully present everything-episodes of stark, unbearable terror along with strange, unbelievable turns of fortune; the worst of human flaws as well as acts of kindness suddenly performed by the most despicable of people-to balance fairly the good and bad that can be found in human beings. We attempt to declare the mystery of life and the human heart that gives birth to hope even when fortune and misfortune become unexpectedly mixed up and change places in an instant. ...Nearly forty years have passed from the day we first began writing in the notebook on the Gulf of Thailand. Our hair is gray now, but we finished the book at last." ------------"Sometimes the truth surpasses anything in the human imagination."------------- Upon arrival in the United States, the authors were interviewed, among many more, by Barbara Walters & Hugh Downs in "A Mission of Mercy", Oprah Winfrey brought the children on the show "The Dignity of Children" on NBC, etc. VU THANH THUY: Senior Fellow, American Leadership Forum - Thought Leader, Images & Voices of HopeBoard Member, American Red Cross, Board Member, New American Media, Board Member, IMD, Mission Member: Katrina Hurricane, Haiti Earthquake, Japan Tsunami, Thailand Tsunami, Philippines Yolanda Typhoon, Cambodia child-sex mission. VT THUY AWARDS: Woman of the Year & Headliner, Woman of Achievement, Woman of Honor, Woman in Media Award, Entrepreneur of the Year, Woman of the 21st Century, We the People's Vision Award, Asian Business Leadership Award, Houston Women's Hall of Fame Induction, Lifetime Achievement - Asian-American Journalists Association, Vietnamese Americans of 25 years, Century Award Woman, and more.