It is their warm and comic love/hate relationship, developing over the course of the summer into something more, that is the soul of award-winning Lai’s ( Listen, Slowly, 2015, etc.) first young adult novel. Hằng’s heartbreaking memories of the day her brother was mistakenly taken by Americans at the end of the war, her harrowing journey to America, and the family she left behind are all tempered by LeeRoy’s quiet patience and exasperated affection. When they find Hằng’s brother and he remembers nothing about Vietnam, Hằng and LeeRoy settle in at the ranch next door. But their chemistry works: Hằng sees through LeeRoy’s cowboy airs, and LeeRoy understands Hằng’s clever English pronunciations, cobbled together from Vietnamese syllables. They make an odd pair, a white boy from Austin and a determined Vietnamese refugee on a mission. After some helpful meddling from a couple at a rest stop, LeeRoy finds himself driving Hằng on her search instead.
On that same day in 1981, an 18-year-old aspiring cowboy named LeeRoy is traveling to Amarillo to pursue his rodeo dreams. The day after Hằng arrives in Texas from a refugee camp, she heads toward Amarillo to find her little brother.
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