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Hello, bookcasers, book nerds. Hello and welcome to the 1002nd episode of the bookcase. I am one of your host, Kate Gibson.

And I'm Charlie Gibson, the other host, Kate's father. And I'm sure that all of you are keeping exact count on how many of these bookcase episodes we've done.

We have, and we hope you have been with us for all 102. But if you haven't, you're forgiven.

We have a very interesting book today. And what attracted me to it, and I called Kate and said,

I want you to read this, was a publisher's blurb that came to us in a sheet of paper inserted in the book that said, this is a book about in which the author

was going to write a memoir of her mother who lived an unexceptional life. And could you

write a book about somebody who read an unexceptional life? Except I thought that was a fascinating

sort of premise.

And then I found, in reading it, that her mother had read a really exceptional life.

The author's name is Kao Kahlia Yang, K-A-O-K-A-L-I-A-Y-A-N-G.

Three words.

Kao Kali-Y-Y-Y-N-G, the words. Kao Kaliya Yang. The name of the book is where Rivers part. Her mother was a

refugee who came to this country, immigrated from Thailand. But she grew up in Laos, just in the wake of the

Vietnam War, where the North Vietnamese were hunting down people of her tribe, trying to kill them.

Because the Mongs, and she is a Hmong, H-M-O-N-G,

had assisted the Americans during the Vietnam War. So she had to live for years at a forest

to escape the North Vietnamese and the Pothet Lao. Then she lived in a refugee camp in Thailand

for a number of years. And then she came to the United

States. I thought that was a really interesting journey, Kate. You know, I feel like in some ways,

I have lived such a privileged life that when somebody says to me, oh, you know, it's an ordinary

...