This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Debra Treesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Paul Yoon read his story Valley of the Moon

from the July 3rd, 2023 issue of the magazine.

Yoon is the author of four books of fiction, including the story collection The Mountain

and the novel Run Me to Earth, which came out in 2020.

A new collection The Hive and the Honey will be published later this year.

Now here's Paul Yoon.

Valley of the Moon

Two years later, he left the settlement.

He took the bus, heading north, and then hitchhiked on the back of a repurposed US Army truck

that was filled with others like him who all said the same thing.

They were heading home.

They all said this knowing that there wasn't much left for them to go home to.

Still, it felt good to see this to one another, to say without saying that they had survived,

and as the truck made stops, they exchanged cartons of cigarettes, small sacks of grain,

shoelaces, pieces of cloth.

Then they asked one another where home was, and how far from the border they would be living.

They asked what refugee settlement others had found themselves in, or how many settlements,

and for how long, or if they had been in one at all.

They asked one another what they had done before the war, and they asked one another their names, and how old they were.

His name was Tongsu.

...